
Book ^^U.. 



CX)PYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



A GENERAL 



I HISTORY OF THE WORLD, 



BRIEFLY SKETCHED, 



UPON SCRIPTURAL PRINCIPLES. 



BBtl)cleo. Cfartl), D.SI., 

OF WIRTEMBERO. 



REVISED BY D, P. KIDDER, 



PUBLISHED BY LANE & TIPPETT, 

rOR THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL 
CHURCH, 200 MULBERRT-STKEET. 

JOSEPH LONGKING, PRINTER. 
1847 






Qlft 

Judga and Mrs. I. R. Hitt 
June 23 1 j36 



EDITOR'S PREFACE. 



This work is a brief universal history, 
sketched upon Scriptural principles. It was 
written by the Rev. Dr. Barth, of Wirtemburg, 
n the German language, and translated into 
:]nglish by Rev. R. F. Walker, A. M., for the use 
f the Rehgious Tract Society of London. By 
lat institution the work has been extensively 
circulated in Great Britain, and even pub- 
lished in other languages. 

The want of such a book has been felt in 
this country, and we take pleasure in offering 
to the pubUc a carefully revised edition. 

It is designed to serve two important pur- 
poses connected with the reading and study 
of history. 1. It will answer for beginners, 
as a useful introduction to more detailed and 
voluminous works. 2. It will scarcely be 
found less valuable as a summary of histori- 
cal events, to which the extensive reader of 



6 editor's preface. 

history may resort for a review of his studies, 
and for a well-digested analysis of the leading 
events which have transpired in our world. 

The importance of historical knowledge is 
universally admitted, and the time has come 
when we may reasonably expect it to be 
more extensively cultivated among sabbath- 
school scholars and teachers. To contribute 
to this end is the special object of the present 
issue, while it will be found equally valuable 
for every other appropriate use. 
New- York, 1847. 



CONTENTS. 



Introduction Pftga 11 

First Period. — From the Creation to the DHuge. 
B. C. 4004 to 2348, Usher. B. C. 5411 to 3155, Hales. 

1. The creation 15 

2. The fall of man 16 

3. The deluge 21 

Second Period. — From the Deluge to the Time of Nebu- 
chadnezzar. 
B. C. 2348 to 588, Usher. B. C 3155 to 586, Hales. 

1. The sons of Noah 23 

2. The building of Babel 26 

3. The dispersion of mankind 29 

4. Earliest notices of Babylon, Nineveh, Phenicia and Egypt 30 

5. Israel and the kingdom of God. 

a. Abraham and his family ......... ,., , ............ 34 

b. The exodus, or departure from Egypt 40 

c. The period of the Judges , . ., 42 

d. Israel at their most flourishing period ..^ 45 

e. Israel in their decline 50 

6. Traces of the earliest cultivation , 54 

Third Period. — From Nebuchadnezzar to Augustus. 
B. C. 588 to 227. 

1. The Babylonian empire 58 

2. The Medo-Persian empire. 

a. History of Cyrus 63 

b. E»d of the Babylonish captivity 65 



CONTENTS. 

c. History of the Greeks Pag6 68 

d. Conflict of Greece with Persia 75 

e. Macedon and Alexander the Great 78 

3. The Grecian empire. 

a. Alexander's conquests and death 85 

b. Alexander's successors 87 

c. Syria and Egypt - - --.. 89 

d. The age of the Maccabees 91 

c. Condition of the East and West 94 

4. The Roman empire. 

a. Rome's earliest history 95 

b. Rome under the consuls ...... 100 

c. The Punic wars 106 

d. Gradual introduction of the imperial monarchy 112 

5. Retrospect of ancient history .. i . i .....-- i .* 117 

Fourth Period. — From the Time of Augustus to the 
Irruptions of the Northern Nations. 
B. C. 27 to A. D. 375, 

1. The birth and history of Christ 122 

2. The first promulgation of Christianity...... 127 

3. Reign of Augustus and his successors, to the time of Ves- 

pasian 129 

4. The destruction of Jerusalem, and persecution of the 

Christians 131 

5. The Roman emperors from Vespasian to Constantino 138 

Fifth Period.— From the Irruptions of the Northern 
Barbarians to the Age of Charlemagne. 
A. D. 306 to 798. 

1. Constantine and the Christian chui-ch 139 

2. The further decline of the Roman empire .., 143 

3. The irniptions of the northern barbai-ians. 

a. The fall of the Roman empire 143 

b. Settlement and position of the nations at this period. . 149 

c. The Eastern empire 150 

d. The Feudal system 152 

e. Christianity among the Germanic nations 154 

4. The Eastern Church 155 

5. Mohammedanism - .^.~ -.^ 156 

6. External and spiritual state of the nations at the close of 

this period 160 



CONTENTS. 9 

Sixth Period. — From Charlemagne to the Reformation. 
A. D. 798 to 1517. 

1. Account of the Carlovingian dynasty Page 163 

2. Germany under Conrad I. and the Saxon emperors 172 

3. Conrad II. and Heiu-y III 176 

4. Other countries of Europe 177 

5. Henry IV. and the Papacy 178 

6. The Feudal and Hanse system 184 

7. State of cultivation and letters 186 

8. The Crusades. 

a. Their origin and design 188 

b. The first Crusade 192 

c. Chivalry • 193 

9. House of Hohenstaufen. 

a. Conrad III 197 

b. The second Crusade - 198 

c. Frederic I. and the third Crusade 199 

d. Henry VI. and Frederic II 203 

e. Conrad IV. and Conradin 205 

/. Literature, and the church 206 

10. Termination and issue of the Ciiisades 209 

11. History of independent govex-nments at this period 213 

12. The house of Hapsburg. 

a. From Rudolph of Hapsburg to Albert 1 220 

h. The Helvetic Confederation 224 

c. From Heniy VII. to Sigismund 227 

d. Contentions for the Papal chair — Council of Constance 232 

e. The Bohemian Brethren and the Hussites 234 

/. From Albert II. to Maximilian 1 237 

13. England, France, Spain, and other countries 240 

14. Important changes at this period. 

a. The invention of gunpow^der 249 

b. Discovery of America 250 

c. Invention of printing 256 

d. Important changes in political government 259 

Seventh Period. — From the Reformation to our own 

Times. 

A. D. 1517 to 1839. 

1. History of the Reformation. 

a. Its commencement in Geniiany 261 

b. The emperor Charles V 263 



10 CONTENTS. 

e. Progress and difficulties of the Reformation in Ger- 
many Page 266 

d. Ferdinand I. and Maximilian II 278 

c. The Hugonots in France * 279 

/. The Refonnation in England and Scotland 283 

g. Portugal, Spain, Italy, and other countries, at the 

Reformation 287 

h. Reflections upon this period 29-6 

i. Progress of letters 298 

2. The thirty years' war 299 

3. Religious state of Gennany at this period 311 

4. Britain, and tlie Netherlands 314 

5. The new political system, and Louis XIV. of France 317 

6. Leopold L and Joseph I. of Germany 327 

7. Britain and North America 328 

8. Conflict of Sweden with Russia 330 

9. The emperor Charles VI. and the province of Branden- 

burg 334 

10. The Papal i^ower at this period 336 

11. Religious state of Europe 338 

12. Frederic IL of Prussia, and Maria Theresa 340 

13. Russia 346 

14. The emperor Joseph II 347 

15. War of independence in North America 350 

16. France, and the progress of infidelity 351 

17. The French Revolution 353 

18. Napoleon, emperor of the French 359 

19. War of independence in Europe 362 

20. Change to the px-esent state of things in Europe, A. D. 

1839 367 

Conclusion 370 



GENERAL HISTORY, 

BRIEFLY SKETCHED, 

UPON SCRIPTURAL PRINCIPLES. 



INTRODUCTION. 

The province of general history is to view the 
human race as one large family, and to trace it 
through all its stages of development, from the ear- 
liest to the latest times. It enters into detail respect- 
ing particular nations, only so far as they have borne 
an essential or a material part in the concerns of 
the family at large ; for which reason also it may 
be sometimes more occupied with the memoirs of 
some renowned individual than with those of a 
whole uncivilized nation, and may properly estimate 
the inventor of printing more than all the warriors 
of the world. But as we cannot assure a traveler 
of his having taken the right road, until we know 
whither he is destined ; so we must feel bewildered 
with unaccountable things in general history, till we 
have received some information concerning the 
great " end of all things, the glory of God." Nor 
can this "end" be guessed at by observing the 
course of any one particular nation only ; every 
such course being nothing more than a single tri- 
butary rivulet, that is added to the swelling river 
and the mighty ocean. Neither can we learn it by 
contemplating the state of the world at any one par- 



12 INTRODUCTION. 

ticular period of its history ; every such period being 
only, as it were, a stage in the transition to some 
further development ; and the history of man so 
often appearing to take a retrograde movement, or 
at least a different com'se from that to which it is 
ultimately bound. Were mankind the arbiters of 
the rise and fall of nations, then might it be possible 
for the events of every passing age to declare to us 
what would be the grand general result. But as the 
current of events is under the influence of man's 
Lord and Ruler, who prescribes the courses of na- 
tions and of individuals, so that all shall concur to 
the fulfillment of his will, the ultimate result can be 
learned only by communications from himself. Di- 
vine INSTRUCTION, therefore^ is requisite to all pro- 
per understanding of human history. 

The greater number of our historians, though they 
have so far honored the Bible as to give it the credit 
of being an authentic record of antiquity, yet have 
too commonly treated it as a mere human book, 
which they allow may be consulted with advantage 
in the absence of other documents ; while they have 
failed to notice, as of prime importance, that it con- 
tains the solution of all historical mystery ; that it 
gives, as it were, a voice to the dead letter of visible 
nature, and exhibits that perfect and complete out- 
line of Providence, which all the apparent confusion 
arising from man's free agency is only filling up 
according to a divinely preconcerted and settled 
plan. Men's ordinary way of consideration dis- 
covers to them, as it were, but the outside of events ; 
like a stranger outside a city, who, ignorant of the 
order of its interior, mistakes for its centre one of the 
more prominent buildings observed by him from 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

his Station without the walls ; whereas the centre is 
some humble fountain in the market-place, which 
of course he is unable to descry. Very different are 
the views of one who makes use of the word of 
God as vantage ground, whence to cast his eye over 
the whole plan of general history, its multifarious 
ramifications, their variety of instruction, their mu- 
tual connection, and their uniform tendency to 
demonstrate the wisdom and goodness of the su- 
preme Ruler and Governor of the world. The only 
key^ then, to a sound and comprehensive knowledge 
of history^ is the sacred volume of divine revelation. 
But this sacred volume is like a sealed book to 
the unconverted. For " the natural man perceiveth 
not the things of the Spirit of God." One part is 
too high for him — he cannot " understand what he 
reads ;" another is too low and insignificant — it ap- 
pears to him as " foolishness." What was intended 
to be taken literally, he mistakes as figurative ; and 
what was to be regarded as deep and holy mystery, 
he regards as common-place. Real prophecy is 
treated by him as historical narrative ; predictions 
concerning yet distant futurity are, in his account, 
already fulfilled; and the counsel of God is con- 
sidered as human device, or is retained merely to 
grace the annals of human achievement. None but 
the Holy Spirit himself can instruct us how to re- 
gard the ways of God, or enlighten us in the true 
import of his own words, and point out their due 
proportion in reference to single or collective events. 
He who by such teaching understands the sacred 
record, can easily understand general history. Here, 
then, let it be noticed, once for all, that both the one 
and the other can be comprehended only by those 



14 INTRODUCTION. 

loho surrender themselves to the guidance of the 
Spirit of God. 

The infallible key of history is the recognition of 
the Lord Jesus Christ as its central point. The 
whole system of the divine government revolves 
around him. Historical works, in general, have 
hardly taken notice of this ; and the manifestation 
of God in the flesh finds a place therein to little 
purpose, beyond that of chronological reference to 
the Christian era. Rarely, indeed, have historians 
looked at events in any subordination to this gi-eat 
and principal one : either because infidelity denies 
or stumbles at the fact, that Christ, who was " with 
God," and " was God," condescended to assume our 
nature ; or because it is easier to relate things in 
their simple historical order, than to trace directly 
or indirectly their connection with that great deed 
of infinite love. If the history of man be no for- 
tuitous series of changes, but a regular system of 
events proceeding upon a divine plan, then must the 
moment when God himself came personally into 
this world in our nature be regarded as the most 
eventful in human history. Everything that pre- 
ceded it must have been designed as preparatory to 
the ushering in of this mighty deed of God ; and 
everything subsequent to it must have been equally 
foreordained to the setting forth of its intent and 
application. Christ is the centre of universal his- 
tory ; ivithout lohich centre the records of the ivorld 
must ever present themselves as a mass of confusion. 

This is a most important truth, to the elucidation 
of which the following pages are mainly devoted. 



GENERAL HISTORY. 



FIRST PERIOD. 

FROM THE CREATION TO THE DELUGE, 

B. C. 4004, Usher, ) . < 2348, Usher. 
5411, Hales, S \ 3155, Hales. 

I.— THE CREATION. 

/As man could not have been an eye witness of the 
manner in which creation began and proceeded, we should 
have possessed no knowledge of the subject had not God 
himself condescended to reveal it. There can be no doubt 
that he imparted all requisite information of the kind to 
our first father, and that a faithful tradition of the same 
was handed down from Adam to Moses. /in the inspired 
record we are taught, that " in the beginning God created 
the heavens and the earth." We are next told of the 
creation of light, and the preparation of the earth for the 
abode of man. JMun, as the crowning ornament of this 
lower world, then came forth on the sixth day from the 
hands of his Maker, in the divine image and likeness. 
God, having already manifested himself in heaven as Lord 
of all, ordained and fitted man to represent him in that 
respect upon earth. He appointed the inferior creatures 
to render homage to this his representative, and they did 
so, not from compulsion or dread, much less from being 
trained to it by art, but from instinctive disposition, or of 
their own natural inclination. 

The Lord God planted, in the regions we call the East, 
a garden, or paradise of innocent delight, for man's primi- 



16 THE FALL OF MAN. 

tive residence. The names of the four rivers that issued 
from it point rather at Armenia than India. Although 
the earth's surface must subsequently have been much 
altered by the universal deluge, which would particularly 
affect the course of streams and rivers, yet it is natural to 
suppose that such rivers as could subsequently be recog- 
nized, still bore, after the flood, their antediluvian names. 
The first pair having been expelled from paradise, they 
and their descendants were prohibited from any attempt 
to return thither, and indeed from all curious inquiries, by 
a fiery guard of cherubim appointed over against it : and 
the deluge in Noah's time must have destroyed every 
trace of it ; unless we may say, with some, that the Cas- 
pian Sea is the memorial of its site, even as the Dead Sea 
was once the beautiful vale of Sodom and GomorrhV. 
But we must not pronounce our maps of Asia defective 
because they contain no trace of the situation of Eden. 

With respect to language, v/e consider the faculty of it as 
having been conferred on man simultaneously ^vith his other 
original endowments, and that he could never have been 
himself its investor. This also may be inferred with sufii- 
cient clearness from Scripture testimony. God, who con- 
versed with him face to face, and probably in human form, 
" as a father with the son in whom he delighteth," declares, 
in the book of Exodus, iv, 11, with express reference to 
speech and eloquence, that he had made man's mouth. 
And we learn from Gen. ii, 19, that he brought to Adam, 
before Eve was formed, every beast of the field, and every 
fowl of the air, to see what he would call them : and that, 
upon this occasion, Adam gave names to all cattle, and 
to every fowl of the air, and beast of the field. 

II.— THE FALL OF MAN. 

That our first parents came forth "good," from the 
hand of the Creator, is a truth which, even if it had not 
been recorded in Scripture, might have been inferred from 



THE FALL OF MAN. 17 

the consideration, that God cannot be the author of evil. 
Their condition was, doubtless, one of such intimate love to 
God as admitted of their having no other will but his ; from 
which, indeed, we can hardly imagine it possible for them 
to deviate. What higher degree of felicity they might have 
reached, had they continued innocent, we know not; but 
we know, that God saw it best, on the whole, to place them 
in a state of probation, by laying upon them an injunction 
not to eat of the fruit of a certain tree, known by the name 
of " the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." But the 
invisible enemy of mankind, who himself had apostatized 
from innocence, and who looked with envy upon their 
felicity, contrived a plot to effect their ruin. For this 
purpose he took possession of the serpent, " the most subtil 
of all the beasts of the field," and, by the instrumentality 
of this animal, insinuated into the mind of Eve those false 
representations by which Adam was likewise beguiled to a 
distrust and disbelief of God. Thus becoming discontented 
with their present condition, they were instigated to raise 
themselves to a higher one, suggested to them by Satan. 
They, therefore, by his advice, partook together of the 
forbidden fruit, whereupon the word of the Lord God was 
immediately fulfilled : " In the day that thou eatest thereof 
thou shalt surely die." Thus they lost at once the divine 
life which had been originally bestowed upon them : their 
disobedience having excluded them from communion with 
their Creator, their condition was now no other than that 
of spiritual death, of which the death of the body was one 
result. After they had heard from the Most High several 
additional announcements, relative to temporal punishment 
for their sin, they were finally ejected from their earthly 
paradise, and hence precluded from partaking of that " tree 
of life " which had been the visible pledge of their immor- 
tality. Had permission to eat of this tree been continued 
to them, it would have implied a permission of their living 
for ever in irremediable coiTuption and hopeless ruin. 



18 THE FALL OP MAN. 

How long their state of innocence lasted is uncer- 
tain. 

The threatened spiritual death thus realized was soon 
found to be accompanied by a train of temporal evils. 
The physical condition of the earth appears to have been 
from that time remarkably altered; and the ground, 
having been cursed for man's sake, produced now its 
"thorns and thistles," in more senses than one, for the 
chastening of man. He had been sentenced to obtain his 
bread by the sweat of his brow, and, the soil no longer 
spontaneously yielding its fruits, " weariness and painful- 
ness " had become part of his allotment, and requisite to his 
subsistence in this life. This, with the consciousness of 
havmg brought all this evil upon himself, might have 
proved intolerable to him, had he not been supported by 
that hope of redemption and deliverance which Jehovah 
graciously provided. God might in holy indignation have 
annihilated the very name of man, or have given him up to 
the ruin he had incurred. But, instead of this, his infi- 
nite mercy contrived a plan of restoration ; and his infinite 
loving-kindness at once announced it, to preserve his guilty 
creatures from utter despair. Thus, at the very moment 
when the justly offended Deity ratified the punishment of 
original sin, he permitted man to hear of redeeming love. 
For nothing less than redeeming love was imbodied in 
those words of vengeance against our great adversary : 
*' I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and be- 
tween thy seed and her Seed ; it shall bruise thy head, and 
thou shalt bruise his heel." This is in reality a promise 
concerning our divine Messiah, by whom the power of 
the enemy was to be broken, as also concerning a per- 
petual conflict to be maintained between the children of 
God and the children of the wicked one. All the tempta- 
tions, sufferings, and persecutions, which have come upon 
holy persons ever since, may be regarded as so many 
bruises on the heel of the woman's promised Seed, 



THE FALL OF MAN. 19 

inflicted by " the old serpent ;" and, in like manner, every 
triumph of faith, and every victory over sin, obtained by 
the children of God, is a kind of treading upon the 
serpent's head. That our first parents understood this 
prediction as containing a promise of the future Redeemer, 
though they knew not the time of its special fulfillment, 
and that they received from God some further information 
about him, though it be not recorded, appear from that 
remarkable saying of Eve at the birth of her first-born, 
" I have gotten the man Jehovah ;" on which account she 
also gave him the name of Cain, which signifies gain or 
acquisition. Thus it must have been divinely intimated 
from the beginning, that the promised Redeemer would 
himself be Jehovah. The expectation formed by Eve, as 
to the coming of the Messiah, the promised Seed, was 
premature ; and Cain, of whom she anticipated such great 
things, proved to be an " evil worker," and a murderer. 
So early had our first parents to learn, by woful expe- 
rience, what an abyss of misery their sin had opened. 
Adam's descendants in general were begotten, as the 
Scripture expressly informs us, " in his own image, after 
his own likeness ;" that is, they were by nature spiritually 
dead in Adam, under the dominion of indwelling sin, and 
hable to all its evil consequences. See Romans v, 21. 
Nevertheless, from the very first, a gracious process of 
recovery from this wretched condition began to manifest 
itself ; and hence, as an anticipated fulfillment of the pro- 
mise above-mentioned, the human race soon became divided 
into two distinct parties — the one consisting of Cain's 
descendants, and the other of the posterity of Seth, who 
was the righteous person " appointed " (as his name sig- 
nifies) to supply the place of murdered Abel. The latter 
appear to have been those who are designated in Scripture 
" the sons of God ;" because from Seth, their progenitor, 
the knowledge and holy fear of God had continued among 
them: whereas those who are called "the daughters of 



20 THE PALL OF MAK. 

men " seem to have been the lineal descendants of Cain ; 
who, we may suppose, exhibited without restraint the 
effects of human corruption. Cain is the first who is 
recorded to have built a city ; and this was intended by 
him, perhaps, both as a refuge from human vengeance, 
and to prevent the dispersion of his posterity. The 
Scriptures frequently, as in the present instance, relate 
a simple fact without accounting for it. But if our minds 
are not prejudiced by the wrong notions of modern pre- 
tenders to wisdom above what is written, we shall often 
be able to deduce a train of valuable inferences from a 
single and slight notice in holy writ. Devout familiarity 
with the Scriptures, faithfulness to their instructions, and 
acquaintance with the human heart, will be found to 
strengthen this faculty of discernment. 

There is every probability that the knowledge of God 
soon became extinct among Cain's descendants. Hence, 
" going in the way of Cain," was proverbial of flagrant 
wickedness. Jude 11. Those who live in the present age 
of invention and refinement should not forget that Jubal, 
the inventor of musical instruments, and Tubal-cain, the 
inventor of copper and iron works, were sons of that La^ 
mech who introduced polygamy, and who, like Cain his 
progenitor, was also a murderer. From the express men- 
tion likewise of the sister of Tubal-cain, and from her name, 
Naamah, which signifies beautiful, we may well conjecture, 
that with her commenced that seduction,* by which, in 
process of time, the posterity of Seth became mingled with 
that of Cain, and adopted its impiety. From this per- 
nicious connection sprang a powerful and tyrannical race, 

* It should seem that heathen mythology has boiTowed from the 
names of Tubal-cain (pronounced, in Hebrew, Tuval-cain) and 
Naamali, those of its Vulcan and Venus ; retaining the meaning of 
the latter {Venus as venusta) and the chief sound of the former 
( Valcain ;) and converting the brother and sister into a husband 
and wife. — Trans. 



THE DELUGE. 21 

which aimed at the subjugation and oppression of the rest 
of mankind ; and as in those times there was no Bible, nor 
the civil order we at present enjoy, every one taking an 
unbridled liberty to do according to his will, the licentious- 
ness of the world became more and more outrageous. In 
those its youthful days, the human powers being fresh and 
vigorous, and men commonly living to nearly a thousand 
years, the violent had sufficient time to accomplish their 
giant plans of mischief, and to consolidate their union for 
the purpose. Their only remaining check, the inward re- 
buke of the Spirit of God in the conscience, becoming daily 
less and less felt and recognized after that the sons of God 
had allied themselves with the daughters of men, and had 
entered into full communion with reprobates, was now to 
be withdrawn entirely. The single family that still heeded 
the voice of God, and lamented the growth of general cor- 
ruption, had lost all mfluence over their godless feUow-men, 
and was exposed to their hatred and contempt. " All 
flesh had corrupted His way upon the earth." 

III.— THE DELUGE. 

Had the enormities of the world been permitted to take 
their course, the moral condition of our race might have 
sunk past recovery. But God had purposed for it a re- 
deeming plan, which nothing should be allowed to frustrate. 
Hence there remained but one expedient; namely, to 
destroy that corrupt generation from the earth, and to 
commence a new race from the above-mentioned single and 
less-infected family of Adam's descendants, the family of 
Noah. For the once goodly field of human nature had 
now become as a wild desert, overrun with pestiferous 
weeds. It required to be wholly broken up, in order to be 
sown with a new and godly seed. Divine forbearance, 
however, still granted it the respite of one hundred and 
twenty years, and meanwhile vouchsafed that repentance 
and righteousness should be preached abroad by Noah. 



22 THE DELUGE. 

But the world regarded him not. " They did eat, they 
drank, they married and were given in marriage ; they 
bought, they sold, they planted, they builded." They pre- 
sumed upon the usual longevity, and thought that as the 
course of nature had all along continued the same, it was 
never likely to suffer any change, much less such a change 
as Noah in his preaching predicted. That holy man, how- 
ever, by divine direction, had in the mean time constructed 
an ark, as an asylum for the representatives of the animal 
world, and especially for his own family, who, as the seed- 
corn of our present human race, were to be preserved 
from the coming deluge. At a set time, and by divine 
appointment, all the animals which God had directed to be 
preserved, and Noah with his wife, his three sons and their 
wives, entered into the ark, and " the Lord shut them in." 
And now " the fountains of the great deep were broken 
up, and the cataracts of heaven were opened," until the 
earth was covered with a universal deluge, and all its 
inhabitants were drowned in the mighty waters. Even to 
this day there are traces everywhere to be found, attesting 
what a change was wrought by that great event, which 
gave another form to the earth's surface. Extensive beds 
of elephants' remains have recently been discovered in the 
wilds of Siberia, where, from the rigor of the climate, none 
of the larger quadrupeds, much less the elephant, or any 
animal of tropical countries, can live in a wild condition, 
and where only the blue fox and the white bear can roam 
at large. In high northern latitudes are imbedded trunks 
of palm-trees, metamorphosed to coal, whereas it is well 
known that the palm-tree can live only in warm climates. 
On the High Alps, and in the slate pits of Gennany, are 
found in a petrified state large beds of muscles, shoals of 
sea fish, and layers of marine plants ; while many of our 
roads are made and repaired with innumerable fragments 
of cornuammonis and other petrified animals, which once 
played in antediluvian seas, but which are now dug up as 



THE SONS OF NOAH. 23 

stone images from the depths of our mountain quarries. 
Such well-known facts clearly testify that whole regions, 
which at present form part of the continent, and are over- 
run with chains of steep and rugged hills, composed in 
former ages the bed of the ocean. To this we may add, 
that of all the nations wherever travelers have penetrated, 
whether in the old world or in the new, there is scarcely 
one, however bai'barous, that does not retain some tradition 
of the deluge, and some story of the man who was saved 
from it in a vessel constructed for the purpose, although 
none of these nations had ever seen or heard of the Scrip- 
tures. God has even converted the stubborn rock into a 
depository of his truth, and into a record of his righteous 
judgments. Thus in the very substance of a school-boy's 
slate, on which the child writes out passages from the sa- 
cred narrative of the deluge, may sometimes be seen the 
skeleton form of some small animal that perished in the 
general overthrow. 



SECOND PERIOD. 

FROM THE DELUGE TO THE TIME OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR. 

B. C. 2348, Usher, ) , ( 588, Usher. 
3155, Hales, ( ^^ I 586, Hales. 

I.— THE SONS OF NOAH. 

When the fiat of the Almighty had gathered back the 
waters of the deluge from off the face of the ground, and 
the ark now rested upon the mountains of Ararat, Noah, 
with his family, came forth, and settled probably in the 
country of Armenia. From hence were his offspring, as 
a new race of mankind, to overspread all the regions of the 
earth. It was at this time that God appointed the rainbow, 
to be a token and pledge that he would never again destroy 
the world with a flood. This natural and beautiful phe- 



24 THE SONS OF NOAH. 

nomenon in the clouds is supposed by some to have then 
first existed, by means of a supervening change in the 
atmosphere. Some new arrangements were now appointed, 
to prevent the return of such gigantic corruption as had 
" filled" the antediluvian earth. The ordinary life of man 
was henceforth rapidly shortened to about one-tenth of its 
former duration. To this eiFect the divine permission of 
animal sustenance, of which we read nothing previously, 
may have perhaps in some degree contributed. Oppor- 
tunities for accumulating so large a measure of iniquity as 
heretofore were thus curtailed; men's natural powers 
were also considerably restricted, and other external limits 
to unbridled self-will, such as laws, magistracy, and civil 
regulations, now gradually arose. The knowledge and 
fear of God, which, through so many centuries, had been 
transmitted from Adam, and faithfully fostered by Noah, 
were to be communicated by him to the new race of men, 
as their most sacred trust. But what God had promised 
concerning the Seed of the woman and the seed of the 
serpent, the everlasting distmction between the children 
of God and the children of men, soon began to reappear 
in Noah's immediate descendants. Hence, in the spirit 
of prophecy, did that patriarch announce to them the oppo- 
site conditions of their remoter posterity. His predictions 
have ever since been fulfilling in the history of all nations 
unto this day, and their fulfillment is likely to continue in 
some respects for a length of time to come. The predic- 
tions we refer to are as follows : — 

" Cursed be Canaan ! 
A servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. 
Blessed be Jehovah the God of Shem ! 
And Canaan shall be his servant. 
God shall enlarge Japheth : 
And he shall dwell in the tents of Shem : 
And Canaan shall be his servant." 

It is remarkable that the name of Canaan U inserted in 



THE SONS OF NOAH. 25 

the curse, instead of that of Ham, his father. Whether 
this is on account of his having personally taken part in 
his father's impiety, we are not mformed. History, how- 
ever, shows that not Canaan's posterity alone have par- 
taken of that curse, but that the other descendants of Ham 
have been bearing it likewise to the present hour. The 
nations of unhappy Africa are all descended from Ham ; 
and how many of these nations have for ages been strug- 
gling with adversity, or groaning under the yoke of slavery, 
while the oppressions they have been suffering have all 
along more and more plainly fulfilled the prophecy of 
Noah ! Yet the curse is expressed in general terms ; and 
as it evidently relates to a temporal rather than a spiritual 
condition, so it does not preclude individuals of the race 
of Ham from enjoying even temporal freedom. The 
hereditary bondage of that race makes, indeed, its conver- 
sion to the true God, and its consequent prosperity, the 
more unj^romising to human effort ; yet the curse of slavery 
may have been overruled to be the means of vast numbers 
of individuals approaching nearer to the light, and this 
has already been experienced by African negroes in the 
West Indies. 

Shem is the progenitor of the swarming eastern world 
in general, and of the nation of Israel in particular : that 
wonderful people, who for ages bore the distinction of the 
chosen seed, and on whose special account it is that Jeho- 
vah is here emphatically called, " The Lord God of Shem." 
This people, moreover, of whom we shall presently take 
more particular notice, are still, " as touching the election, 
beloved for the fathers' sakes." Rom. xi, 28. Their re- 
jection is now, we hope, very near to the close of its 
appointed period ; for they are not cast off for ever. 

Japheth is the forefather of the European West, and of a 
large portion of Asia. In him is accomplished that pre- 
diction of Noah, " God shall enlarge Japheth ;" that is, 
shall spread his descendants very extensively abroad. 



26 THE BUILDING OF BABEL. 

They have settled in the tents of Shem, and have become 
proprietors of all those countries which are part of Shem's 
allotment, and which, in the future prosperity of the 
Israelites, will virtually be restored to his dominion. 

As to where the immediate children of these three pa- 
triarchs respectively fixed themselves, the Scripture inti- 
mates but occasionally, by mentioning some of the heads 
of their families and nations ; as it records only the great 
leading events, and those which characterize a whole age 
or a whole people. It passes, with a very slight notice, 
over centuries that were requisite to the early development 
of the human race, or what may be called its juvenile 
formation, just as it passes over the early years of our 
Saviour's life ; or as our modern biographical memoirs 
give but a slight sketch of a person's younger days, or 
record concerning them merely what is most remarkable. 
One very remarkable event in the earlier history of man 
appears suddenly in the midst of a vacant space of nearly 
three centuries ; a period respecting which we have else 
nothing beyond a list of names. That event is the building 
of Babel. 

IL— THE BUILDING OF BABEL. 

From the mountainous regions of Armenia, where 
Noah with his descendants had settled, the increase of the 
human family took a south-east direction toward the plains 
of Shinar, a proverbially fertile country, situated between 
those famed rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris, and 
thence called by the Hebrews, Aram Naharaiam, (or Syria 
of the two rivers,) and by the Greeks, Mesopotamia. But 
as in process of time the limits even of this country were 
found too narrow for the increasing population, and as men 
perceived that a large portion of their number would soon 
have to seek out remoter settlements, whereby the human 
family was likely to become scattered, they resolved to 
build a great city and tower, as well for their own reputa- 



THE BUILDING OP BABEL. 27 

tion and glory, as for establishing a metropolitan centre of 
union. Now, in this enterprise they did not first ask 
counsel of God, neither did they intend the building for 
the honor of his holy name, but simply for their own re- 
nown : so soon was the bulk of mankind again estranged 
from their Maker. And, indeed, it is a fact of daily expe- 
rience, that the further men decline from the true God, 
the more is it their aim and endeavor to exalt themselves, 
and thus to usurp his authority. Hence do men still 
combine together and form associations, with no other 
design than to increase their power of self-gratification. 
They have learned that union is strength ; and this lesson, 
which admits of such excellent use, is often misapplied to 
the very worst of purposes. Such was the case also at 
that period, when mankind had but one common language, 
a circumstance that made it the easier to accomplish what- 
ever they concerted. Their undertaking amounted to a 
conspiracy against God himself; for, in immediate oppo- 
sition to his counsel and command, they had virtually 
agreed to refrain from replenishing the distant regions of 
the earth. See Gen. ix, 1. They had also rejected God, 
and chosen for themselves another centre of unity ; they 
had formed a plan for setting up an impious independence, 
which they intended should command the admiration of 
posterity. 

How morally ruinous would have been the consequences, 
had Babel been established according to the intention of 
its builders ! It would have been the rendezvous of every 
evil from every country ; so that from thence mischief 
would have gone forth, in tenfold variety and strength, to 
consummate the corruption of all the ftimilies of the earth. 
God, therefore, " came down to visit the city and the tower 
which the children of men had builded ;" he so confounded 
their language that they no longer understood one another. 
Hence, they not only desisted from their enterprise, but 
became divided into distinct nations, according to their 



28 THE BUILDING OF BABEL. 

several dialects or languages, ' and went forth to stations 
more or less remote the one from the other. This was no 
other than a disposal of divine goodness and mercy ; and, 
without it, the wickedness of mankind might soon have 
emulated theirs who were swept away by the deluge. But 
now their former general sameness of condition no longer 
existed ; each nation learned to pursue its own independent 
aims and interests ; and though they were " all gone out 
of the way" of real prosperity, insomuch as they lived 
without God in the world, and sought not the divine bless- 
ing on their proceedings, still the power of evil could not 
"now be so great and general, nor its increasing infection 
so rapid, nor the ruin of any distinct people so precipitate ; 
and though one nation might fall, another would stand, 
and perhaps learn, by the fate of its neighbors, such expe- 
rience and prudence as M^ould serve to procrastinate its 
own downfall. Even the overthrow of any one nation 
would not necessarily annihilate it; but its humiliation, 
under the dominion of another, might prove so salutary to 
it, as to leave its recovery still possible ; whereas, had 
mankind remained as one people, their utter corruption 
|i,nd ruin might soon have been, humanly speaking, una- 
voidable. Yet the world has all along mistaken God's 
beneficial intentions in this separation of mankind, and 
nearly every age has witnessed the repeated attempt to 
reunite the nations under one temporal head, and to subject 
as much of the whole world as possible to the will of one 
"man. Thus it was in the times of the Assyrian, the Baby- 
lonian, and the Persian empires ; as also in the time of 
Alexander. Rome, in like manner, first by its imperial 
^nd afterward by its Papal power, and Napoleon, at a 
later day, endeavored to accomplish such a design ; but no 
attempt of the kind has ever completely succeeded, because 
God himself is Ruler of the world, and it would be con- 
trary to his plan that such attempts should be successful. 



THE DISPERSION OF MANKIXD. ^^ 



III.— THE DISPERSION OF MANKIND. 

The building of Babel occurred in tbe days of Peleg, 
who lived B. C. 2247, according to Usher, or 2754, ac- 
cording to Hales. The tenth chapter of Genesis informs 
us, verse 25, that "in his days was the earth divided." 
Whether by this is likewise to be understood the severing 
of the American continent from Europe or Asia, as some 
think, after one division of the people dispersed from Babel 
had settled in America, we know not ; but it is evident 
that the words refer to that division and dispersion of man- 
kind which we have already noticed, and of which we are 
here to give some further account. 

The posterity of Ham was distributed into four great 
branches. The descendants of his son Cush peopled the 
south-east of Asia, as India, China, and Japan. Mizraim 
settled in Egypt and Lybia, and spread northward into 
Philistia, and southward into Abyssinia, and probably also 
into Caffreland. Phut filled western Africa with a great 
many petty nations ; and Canaan was the forefather of the 
Phenicians, the earliest mercantile nation of antiquity : he 
was also the ancestor of the heathen tribes of Palestine, 
including those of the vale of Siddim. From Japheth are 
descended all those nations which possess the whole north 
and south of Europe, and all that part of Asia which lies 
north of the Black Sea and the Caspian. The Germanic 
nations also, probably, are descended from his son Gomer. 
Offsets from Japheth have likewise spread toward the 
south of Asia. The race of Shem remained nearest to the 
original settlement of man, and replenished principally the 
countries between the Euphrates and the Tigris, as Assy- 
ria and Chaldea ; but, in after ages, the descendants of his 
great-grandson Heber (whence the name of the Hebrews) 
expelled the Canaanites, and possessed their land. Of 
course, the confines of these three principal divisions of 



30 EARLIEST NOTICES OF BABYLON, 

mankind, after their dispersion and settlement, were not 
80 definite as to obviate such partial admixtures as effaced, 
in many countries, the original characteristics of lineage ; 
but differences of complexion, acquired by variety of cli- 
mate, as also differences of proportions in the human frame 
and language, have so clearly preserved the gi'and distinc- 
tions to this day, that there are persons who even dispute 
the origination of mankind from a single pan*, notwith- 
standing God's word most evidently shows it, and ex- 
pressly says that he "hath made of one blood all nations 
of men for to dwell on the face of the whole earth." Acts 
xvii, 26. But it is not yet satisfactorily discovered from 
which of the three branches the aborigines of America 
descended, though it is most probable that they belong to 
that of Shem ; and if so, this is a further accomplishment 
of the prophecy of Noah, Gen. ix, 27, " God shall enlarge 
Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem." 

IV.—EARLIEST NOTICES OF BABYLON, NINEVEH, 
PHENICIA, AND EGYPT. 

The rapidity with wliich the earth became peopled after 
the flood is indicated by the very early establishment of 
monarchy in the land of Shinar, under Nimrod, the grand- 
son of Ham. He is called in Scripture " a mighty one in 
the earth," and " a mighty hunter before the Lord." The 
dominion he acquired was the foundation of the Assyro- 
Babylonian empire. Assur, a son of Shem, who had pre- 
viously settled in that country, being supplanted by Nim- 
rod's superior force, afterward built further north, and on 
the banks of the Tigris, the city of Nineveh, which was 
the commencement of the Assyrian state. Babylon itself 
subsequently came under the dominion of the Chaldean 
race ; for, still later, we find the Chaldeans distinguished 
by precedency among the inhabitants of Babylon. But 
of the earliest history of these states, and of the probably 



NINEVEH, PHENICIA, AND EGYPT. 31 

fabulous names of tlieir princes, as Ninus, Semiramis, Sar- 
danapalus, etc., we have no further particulars that can be 
depended on. Their historical importance commences 
where we find them beginning to influence the destinies of 
surrounding nations. 

While the endeavor was making in Babylon to restrain 
private freedom by imperial and despotic power, and to 
found a government which, prescribing to itself no limits, 
was continually acquiring central consolidation, the de- 
scendants of Canaan, who had settled at the foot of Mount 
Lebanon, sought their prosperity by commerce, and real- 
ized all those results of a great mercantile system which 
have so often been repeated in subsequent ages ; namely, 
abundant riches, wanton luxury, unbridled levity, grievous 
sins, and sudden downfall. 

The descendants of Mizraim, in Egypt, developed their 
character in quite another manner. Men having now lost 
the knowledge of God, and with it that of their real wel- 
fare, each nation endeavored to realize in a way of its own 
the idea it had conceived of a happy and honorable condi- 
tion. This was remarkably the case with the Egyptians ; 
who, having first settled in the regions watered by the 
sources of the Nile, propagated their government of priests, 
from ancient Meroe and the mountains of Ethiopia, down 
as far as Thebes, thence to Memphis, and afterward to 
the Delta. The strange ideas fostered by their idolatrous 
priesthood, and the elaborate products of their speculative 
human wisdom, not merely as disclosed to the initiated, 
but as displayed openly to the world, constitute them one 
of the most mysterious of all the nations of antiquity : and, 
as if a vivid remembrance of Babel's magnificence had 
been specially preserved among them, we behold at this 
day, still towering upon their plains, those stupendous edi- 
fices, the pyramids and obelisks ; and the colossal remains 
of their idol temples, which are yet standing after the lapse 
of thirty or forty centuries, show how diligently this people 



32 EARLIEST NOTICES OF BABYLON, 

applied themselves to architecture, and what wonderful 
advancements they made in it. Earlier, and more evi- 
dently than any other nation mentioned in history, did 
Egypt prove how soon the knowledge of the true God was 
lost after the deluge ; notwithstanding Noah survived that 
event three hundred and fifty years, as did Shem five hun- 
dred, and, doubtless, continued to call upon the name of 
the Lord, and to proclaim it unintermittingly. But al- 
though men forgot and abandoned the true God, they 
could never rid themselves of a sense of their dependence 
upon some superior Being. They felt the need of having 
a God at hand to aid them in their necessities ; but then 
they wished that such a God might hinder, as little as 
possible, the gratification of their lusts and selfish desires. 
Thus they devised the expedient of adoring a host of natu- 
ral objects, and of making for themselves gods at pleasure 
out of carved images. Though at first they merely in* 
tended to regard such things as representatives of the in- 
visible God, and thus to make it the easier for their fleshly 
mind to ascend to what is invisible, by shortening the vast 
distance between the creature and the Creator ; yet even 
this vain intention of idolatry was soon forgotten, and the 
visible object alone became regarded. Such was the com- 
mencement of idolatry, which appears to have been a 
thing unknown to the antediluvian world ; for before the 
flood man's self-sufficiency had <;hosen to have no God at 
all. 

Now was " the glory of the incorruptible God changed 
into an image like unto corruptible man, and to birds, and 
four-footed beasts, and creeping things." Kbm. i, 19, etc. 
Pre-eminently is this true of Egypt, where animals of all 
kinds were held sacred and were worshiped, and where 
the madness of idolatry was exhibited in every stage of 
the disease. The history of that country has but too evi- 
dently shown, how easily compatible with the utmost re- 
finement of mere earthly intellect, and with scientific cul- 



NINEVEH, PHENICIA, AND EGYPT. 33 

tivation of every sort, is the utmost obscuration and de- 
basement of all the nobler faculties of the human mind. 
While the remains of Egyptian architecture, and its other 
works of art, serve to testify, that in very early ages as- 
tonishing progress was made in mechanics, geometry, and 
astronomy ; they shov/, at the same time, that in respect 
to the knowledge of the true God, the Egyptians were 
upon a level with the wildest savages : indeed, it may truly 
be said, that the worship of the Great Spirit among the 
North American Indians is even better than all the com- 
plex idolatry of ancient Egypt. Are we to suppose that 
its priesthood had any purer knowledge of God, and that 
they only kept the people in ignorance for the purpose of 
rendering them the more abjectly instrumental to their 
craft ? If so, what real worth can possibly be attributed to 
their purer notions, when these could permit them to de- 
bar their fellow-men from obtaining the dearest treasure 
of this life, a behef in the one living and true God ! Their 
case, however, suggests an important remark ; namely, 
that the neologians, and others of our own days, have no 
cause to boast of their own cultivation and refinement, as 
long as their religion shows itself to be nothing better than 
the more refined idolatry of the Egyptian priests ; that is, 
as long as they do not cordially own and serve the true 
God, who was manifest in the flesh in the person of our 
Saviour Jesus Christ. 

The least offensive form of idolatry was that of Shem's 
posterity, m Chaldea and Persia, where the sun, stars, and 
fire were worshiped as emblems of the invisible God. 
But this species of worship is of somewhat later date; for, 
even in Jacob's time, we find that Laban, who was a de- 
scendant of Shem, had idols in his possession. The na- 
tions of southern Asia, especially of India, went to the 
very opposite extreme of gross idolatry, in which they 
have persisted to this day, and have disclosed all its abomi- 
nations and horrors to the full, in their professed worship 
2* 



34 ISRAEL AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

of devils ; but the earliest accounts of those countries are 
enveloped in fable. It is in comparatively modern times 
that we descry among them a beam of that light which 
sprung up in Palestine, and gi'adually found its way to 
distant countries. 



v.— ISRAEL AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

(a.) Abraham and his Family. 

At about the middle period between the creation and 
the birth of Christ, was born, in Ur, of the Chaldees, Abra- 
ham, the son of Terah, of the posterity of Shem. He was 
one of the remaining few who retained the knowledge of 
the true God, which was continued from Noah by indi- 
vidual descendants. It is very probable that Abraham's 
family resided in the near neighborhood of Noah's own 
settlement ; and that the time of Noah's death, which was 
in Abraham's sixtieth year, was the very season in which 
the Lord appeared unto Abraham, " and said unto him, 
Get thee out of thy country, and fi'om thy kindred, and 
come into the land which I shall show thee." Acts vii, 3. 
Abraham accordingly went, with his wife, his father Te- 
rah, and his nephew Lot, into the land of Haran, where 
he abode until Terah's death. Hereupon a fresh command 
appears to have been given to him, to emigrate further, 
that is, into Canaan ; and a promise was added that God 
would make him a great nation. Gen. xii, 1. Then went 
Abraham forth, not knowing whither he went ; but, having 
faith in the divine word, he obeyed ; and his eyes were 
always open to observe the leadings of God's providence, 
or the least intimation of his will. Herein consisted that 
pre-eminence which is given him even in the New Testa- 
ment ; a pre-eminence which will ever belong to him, on 
account of his remarkable faith in God. Abraham be- 
lieved God ; he staggered not at the promise, but against 
hope believed in hope. The great reason assigned, 1 Pet. 



ISRAEL AND THE KINGtDOM OE GOD. 36 

iii, 20, for the severe punishment of the antedihivian -world 
is, that they believed not ; that men were so sunk in things 
visible, that they totally disregarded the invisible things 
of God. This infidelity, though it were not, as it com- 
monly is, united with peculiarly evil practices, is sufficient 
of itself to blight every bud of human happiness, and to 
render us obnoxious to divine wrath ; whereas, real faith 
in God contains within itself the very germ of blessedness, 
and will ever bring forth its fruit in its season. There- 
fore it is written of Abraham that his faith was counted 
unto him for righteousness. Rom. iv, 3. For faith obeys 
the truth, as it is in Jesus ; renounces self; and being also 
the most beautiful work of God in the inner man, no won- 
der it is so well-pleasing in his sight. 

True rehgion became, after Noah's death, limited to a 
very few. Hence it was necessary that it should be 
guarded and cherished by extraordinary divine superin- 
tendence, to prevent its utter extinction. God therefore 
provided for its preservation in one branch of mankind, 
until Christ himself, the Light of the world, should come. 
For this purpose he appointed Abraham to be the fore- 
father of a nation which, as his peculiar people, it please€l 
him to keep separate from other nations, so as to fence 
out from them the world's unbelief and idolatiy. He 
committed to them the knowledge of the truth as unalien- 
able property ; that, in the very midst of all the idolatrous 
and apostate nations, one place at least might be found, 
from which, after a lapse of ages, at the period of redemp- 
tion, divine light and truth might shine forth upon the rest 
of mankind. He condescended to take this people under 
his special protection and discipline, that they might ulti- 
mately prove a blessing to the whole world. Thus he 
gave them his law, his ordinances, his worship, and a cer- 
tain acquaintance with that plan of salvation which in due 
time was to be disclosed to all nations, for " obedience to 
the faith." This information was to serve as a check to 



3G ISRAEL AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

tlie general coiTuption '• for the time tlien present," and 
to make way for a better and more permanent state of 
things* 

Here, then, we are required to take notice of a king- 
dom which God has formed for himself in the midst of the 
kingdoms of tliis Avorld, which have ever sought their wel- 
fare either in military achievements, or in the arts and 
sciences, or in manufactures and commerce, and ndt in 
the divine favor and blessing. This kingdom of God is 
to be regarded as twofold ; namely, as consisting of an ex- 
terior form, and of an internal substance. As to its exte- 
rior form, God fashions it by laws, ordinances, and his 
own peculiar guardianship, into a firm barrier against the 
general inundation of idolatrous rites and infidel apostasy. 
He propagates by its institutions a pure knowledge and 
worship ; he defends the true worshipers within it in their 
conscientious performance of his will, and causes its light 
to shine also far and wide into the surrounding moral dark- 
ness. With respect to its internal substance, it consists of 
all those who, far from being satisfied with their own out- 
ward acknowledgment of the truth, admit it also to the 
government of their affections and lives, walk by lively 
faith in God and his promises, and make it their chief 
business to diffuse the light of the gospel in the v/orld. 
These persons, whose number is not to be reckoned and 
determined, are emphatically, in all ages, the pillars of the 
earth, and the sustainere of its inhabitants. For their 
sakes, and in answer to their prayers and intercessions, 
does God still bear with an apostate world. They are the 
lively, healthful, and ever-renewing flower of his dominion 
here on earth, whose exterior constitution would soon fade 
and fall off without it, like fruit twice dead at the core. 
These observations equally apply to the church of God 
under the Old Testament. 

As the conduct and condition of every nation cannot but 
have a nearer or more distant relation to this kinsrdom of 



ISRAEL AND TUE KINGDOM OF GOD. 37 

God, so all things bear a collective reference to Christ as 
their centre. The whole ritual of its ordinances under 
the former dispensation, all the sacrifices, festivals, and 
sacred observances, pointed, either figuratively or ex- 
pressly, at the promised Messiah, and foreshowed the do- 
minion he was to have over the earth. The kingdom of 
God under the New Testament is named by the very 
name of Christ ; it is called Chi-ist's kingdom. It leans 
for its support upon the recorded and stupendous parts of 
Christ's history, and proclaims his imperishable word. As 
all the vital members of the kingdom of God, before the 
birth of Christ, testified their faith principally by trusting 
in the word of promise concerning the Messiah that was 
to come ; so all the spiritual members of the same king- 
dom, under the New Testament, possess true and inward 
life in exact proportion as Christ lives within them, and is 
formed within them the " hope of glory." 

Christ is the centre of the kingdom of God, and hence 
of all mankind. The very time of his appearing was the 
middle period of history since the flood; and even the 
country where he was manifested in the flesh, where the 
kingdom of God was first propagated, and where it will at 
length be earliest glorified with the glory of the latter days, 
is in the centre of the world's population. The shortest 
distance from all parts of the world, as known to the an- 
cients, may be found in the Holy Land, as a common 
centre for the compass of Europe, Asia, and Africa ; and 
this very situation of a country the most important to all 
nations is of no small account. Into this land did God 
conduct Abraham, and promised to give it to him and to 
his seed for an everlasting possession, as we read in the 
book of Genesis, where his history is minutely recorded. 
It required the steady eye of an eminent believer to look 
for the fulfillment of such a promise ; for, when this pro- 
mise was made, the land was as yet, and for a long time 
to come, in the hands of its ancient possessors, the heathen 



88 ISRAEL AND THE KINGDOM OE GOD. 

descendants of Ham: and when Abraham wanted in it 
only a small "parcel of ground," for a burial place, he 
was obliged to give a price for it to the sons of Heth. 
But harder trials of his faith still awaited him, especially 
the giving up of his Isaac, the very child of promise. 
This trial, however, he endured, and came off with honor; 
so that he obtained the title of " father of all them that 
believe." The Scriptures show us the example of his 
modesty. Gen. xxiii ; his devoted and self-denying courage, 
chap, xiv ; his peaceable disposition, chap, xiii ; his disin- 
terestedness, chap, xiv, 21-23; his spiritual piety, chap, 
xii, 7, 8 ; xiii, 18 ; his humility, chap, xviii, 27 ; his zeal 
for the truth, chap, xiii, 4 ; xxi, 33.* But what nation 
among the heathen can show us such qualities in any of 
their ancient heroes ? Yet Abraham, w^ith all this, led the 
laborious life of a nomadic wanderer: for his large pos- 
sessions of cattle obliged him to remove from place to 
place for pasturage ; and when drought prevented his find- 
ing a sufficiency of it in the land of Canaan, he was con- 
strained even to go down into Egypt, and seek a place for 
his flocks and herds in the rich pastures of the Nile. 
Moreover, he always dwelt in tents ; a mode of life which 
could not but be attended with many inconveniences and 
privations. He built no city, because he looked for a bet- 
ter country, that is, a heavenly, whose builder and maker 
is God. 

Abraham, by divine appointment, received the sign of 
circumcision as a token of the covenant which God made 
with him ; and this sign is still retained, not only by the 
chosen people descended from Abraham by his son Isaac, 
but likewise by the other numerous posterities of Abra- 
ham, as the Ishmaelites, who descend from him by Hagar, 
and by the Midianites, who descend from him by Keturah, 

* 111 these two last cited passages we find the expression, "Call 
on the name of the Lord ;" which is by Luther, whose version the 
author follows, ti-auslated, " Preach the name of the Lord." 



ISRAEL AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 39 

and who are called at this day by the common name of 
Arabs and Bedoweens. From the country of Ishmael 
proceeded the religion of the impostor Mohammed, and 
that country is still its strong-hold: its inhabitants, also, 
continue to revere Ibrahim (Abraham) as their great 
progenitor. 

Isaac and Jacob lived, like Abraham, a life of faith, as 
sojourners in Canaan. They built altars to the honor of 
Almighty God; they preached of his name among their 
heathen neighbors ; * were honored by him with special 
revelations, and consoled themselves with the divine pro- 
mise, the fulfillment of which they " saw afar off." They 
sought a country and a home ; but they " declared plainly " 
that it was a heavenly country for which they looked : and 
this is what chiefly distinguishes them, and others like them, 
from the rest of the world, who " mind earthly things," and 
seek for nothing better and beyond. And as they main- 
tained this heavenly-mindedness in the midst of a crooked 
and perverse generation, therefore God put upon them the 
great honor of recording their names together with his own, 
by calling himself " the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of 
Jacob." This is a distinction which casts all human glory 
and renown into the shade. How difficult it must have 
been for them, surrounded as they were with such corrupt 
heathen neighbors, to exercise and maintain this simple 
faith, several incidents of their history very plainly inti- 
mate. We need only call to remembrance those descend- 
ants of Ham who once peopled Sodom and Gomon-ha, Ad- 
mah and Zeboiim, in the vale of Siddim, who carried their 
enormous wickedness to such a height, that even the for- 
bearance and long-suffering of God were superseded by 
hot displeasure, which miraculously overthrew them by 
" brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven." The 
Dead Sea covers that once beautiful and fruitful vale, 

* See the note on page 38. 



40 ISRAEL AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

which was the theatre of their sins and of their punishment^ 
with dull and cheerless waters. 

But even among these patriarchs and their immediate 
descendants is perceived the distinction, already noticed, 
between the interior and exterior of God's kingdom upon 
earth. Witness the distinction between Isaac and Abra- 
ham's other children, and the opposite characters of many 
others who possessed similar outward advantages. 

By the marvelous leadings of providence in the instance 
of Joseph, the people, whom God had appointed to become 
the supporters of his kingdom, were removed to Egypt, 
where, even at that time, the kingdom of Thebes existed. 
All kingdoms of the world are obliged to do God service, 
and are made use of by him as his instruments. Thus he 
was pleased to use Egypt, at that period, to minister to 
the temporal necessities of his people. 

(b.) The Exodus, or Departure from Egypt. 

When Israel emigrated to Egypt, the pecuhar people 
and kingdom of God consisted of a single family. Whether, 
among other nations, there were many individuals who 
worshiped the true God, is uncertain. How important, 
then, was it, that this family should be sustained ! and how 
admirable were the extraordinary measures which God 
ordained for that purpose ! i\fter Joseph's death, when 
his services to Egypt were forgotten, and Abraham's race 
had become exceedingly multiplied, the Egyptians began 
to oppress this part of it with the greatest injustice and 
rigor. There is every probability, however, that this op- 
pression was the very means of preventing Israel's utter 
apostasy from the true God. Certainly it induced them to 
cry unto the Lord for deliverance. He heard their prayer ; 
and sent, as their deliverer and conductor, his servant 
Moses, who, during forty years' retirement among the 
pastoral people of Midian, had become prepared for this 
great office. With almighty hand and outstretched arm 



ISRAEL AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 41 

God liberated them from their oppressors, and led them 
through the depths of the Red Sea, as on dry land, into the 
wilderness of Sinai. There, amid mighty thunderings on 
the mount burning with miraculous fire, he gave them his 
law from heaven, the constitution and ordinances of which 
were calculated to prevent their mixing with heathen na- 
tions around them, and to perpetuate among themselves the 
knowledge and worship of the one living and true God. It 
also contained enough of what was visible and symbolical, 
not only to content a people familiar with didactic appeals 
to the senses, and fond of visible demonstrations, but also 
to rivet their attention. But although their knowledge of 
the truth during their hard service in Egypt was never 
totally extinct, their long sojourn and familiarity with 
Egyptian heathenism had blunted their feeling for the 
truth ; and even God's miraculously conducting them out 
of Egypt, his majestic manifestations and revelations on 
Mount Sinai, and their marvelous sustenance by bread 
and flesh from above, did not leave upon them that im- 
pression which might reasonably have been looked for. 
God therefore suffered that whole generation, amounting 
to between two and three hundi'ed thousand souls, all of 
whom, when they left Egypt, were twenty years old and 
upward, to die during the forty years' march through the 
wilderness ; and only the next generation, which had grown 
up with God's miracles before their eyes, and had been all 
along educated in his law, were conducted by him into the 
promised land. To them it was commanded utterly to 
extirpate the nations descended from Ham, who hitherto 
had been possessors of that country ; and this they were to 
do, not only that room might be made for the people of 
God, but because those nations had now filled up the 
measure of their iniquities, and had thereby incurred the 
sentence of utter destruction. To what a mass of enormity 
their guilt had by this time amounted, may be conjectured 
from the account which the Scripture gives of the inhabitants 



42 ISRAEL AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

of the vale of Siddim, who, even several centuries before, had 
become ripe for the vengeance of Heaven. The Israelites, 
however, did not entirely fulfill this commission, but suffer- 
ed several of those nations, especially the Philistines in the 
south-west part of the country, and upon the coast of the 
Mediterranean, to live ; and thus reserved the scourge of 
chastisement for their own future disobedience. 

(c.) The Period of the Judges. 

The people of Israel formed twelve tribes, among whom 
the land of Canaan was now partitioned, and each of them 
took possession of its lot. Then was put into fulfillment 
the promise which God had made to Abraham, nearly five 
centuries before : " Unto thy seed will I give this land." 
For a considerable period after the death of Joshua the 
elders of the tribes conducted the government ; and the 
fresh remembrance of the miracles and signs by which God 
had brought them into the land, upheld among them at this 
period the worship of the one true God. But Israel had 
not hearkened to the divine injunction, to extirpate utterly 
the heathen inhabitants ; they had even suffered a portion 
of them to remain in the very bosom of the country; and 
thus were seduced by these bad neighbors into idolatry 
itself, insomuch that very many of them worshiped the 
Phenician gods, Baalim and Ashtaroth. Had Jehovah 
the Gcodi of Israel suffered this to pass with impunity, the 
whole nation would by little and little have utterly declined 
to idolatry, and the light of the knowledge of his glory, 
which he had committed to their trust, would have become 
totally extinguished. But it was impossible that there 
should be an end of the kingdom of God, and the promise 
of salvation and blessedness to all the families of the earth. 
God therefore delivered his people, from time to time, into 
the hands of their heathen neighbors, those very nations 
whose dead gods Israel had chosen in preference to their 
own living and true God. Thereupon were the people 



ISRAEL AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 43 

brought again to their right mind, and returned in peni- 
tence to their Maker, who forthwith delivered them out of 
the hand of their enemies round about, by the instrumen- 
tality of those heroic believers whom he raised up among 
them ; and who, generally with small means, achieved 
wonderful deeds by the power of simple faith. Such 
champions of Israel usually continued, during the remain- 
der of their lives, to judge and conduct, or to be honored 
as judges and leaders among the people ; and it was their 
business to take care that the help of God should not be 
forgotten. 

At a subsequent period, " there was no judge in Israel, 
but every man did that which was right in his own eyes." 
Thus the whole nation relapsed again and again into idola- 
try, for which, on each occasion, they were " sold into the 
hand of" a heathen neighbor; but on their repenting, 
were again restored to prosperity by means of some 
divinely commissioned deliverer. 

This state of things lasted from their settlement in 
Canaan to the reign of Saul ; or during a period of about 
three centuries and a half. 

Certain as it is that, in those early times, a variety of sins, 
and especially such as always have prevailed in immediate 
connection with idolatry, were peculiarly seductive to the 
IsraeUtes ; yet, that a nation should, for so long a time, 
have gone on well, and have enjoyed peace at home and 
abroad, without a king, without military or political 
ascendency, and without any of the usual forms of govern- 
ment, and should have been kept in check by the mere 
respect in which the heads of families were held ; or, in 
weightier matters, by oracles delivered through the high 
priest, immediately from God, is certainly a very remark- 
able, and well nigh unexampled, phenomenon. That period 
was not only the age of Israel's heroes, but also a period 
when piety, simplicity, and good morals, must still have 
subsisted to a considerable extent among the people at 



44 ISRAEL AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

large ; though it is also true that the sins which occasion- 
ally broke out betrayed strong natural corruption, of a 
wild and very unsubdued kind, as is seen in the instances 
of Samson and of the Benjamites. 

At the close of this period, we find the office of the 
judges in the hands of the prophet Samuel, a man full of 
faith and power, a destroyer of idolatry in Israel, and 
the persevering teacher of Jehovah's law. He went upon 
circuits from tribe to tribe, held public sessions, adjusted 
private differences, and founded, there is reason to believe, 
those schools of the prophets, in which priests and teachers 
of the law were afterward educated for the propagation of 
pure doctrine, and the prevention of idolatry. Under the 
administration of Samuel, the Philistines also were sub- 
dued and humbled ; and the whole country enjoyed such a 
tranquil and well-ordered condition as it I ad not realized 
for a length of time, and had only to wish that, if possible, 
such a state of things might continue. But Samuel was 
now old ; " his sons walked not in his ways ;" and sooner 
or later the national confusion was likely, as they feared, 
to return. This induced them to imagine, that if they were 
formed into a kingdom, like the nations around them, such 
changes and disorders, as in the days of the judges had so 
often shattered their prosperity, were not likely to return. 
God himself, however, had long ago provided for that exi- 
gence ; and, even in the wilderness, (Deut. xvii, 14, etc.,) 
had intimated as much ; but, though he had intended they 
should have a human king, he was justly displeased that, 
in hastily desiring one, they had " rejected himself from 
being king over them." Had they observed and followed 
his will, they would have found that the regal constitution 
and government they had now preferred was the very one 
he had appointed for them. Lideed he himself would still 
have remained their invisible King, and he, though a God that 
hidetii himself, would have politically directed them : and 
hereby were the people of God to have been distinguished 



ISRAEL AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 45 

firom all other people. He had shown himself able, as 
they very well knew, to protect and defend them against 
all their enemies; and, during the long period of the 
judges, not one of the heathen nations ventured to assault 
them, except when they had sinned agamst him by their 
idolatry. Whenever any doubtful matter occurred, con- 
cerning which the will of their supreme Governor needed 
to be known, the high priest had only to put on the ephod 
and inquire of the Lord : and how blessed above all other 
nations would Israel have been, if they had remained con- 
tented with such a government as this ! But it required 
faith to regard an invisible God as " a God at hand," and 
as " a king among them ;" and it demanded very devout 
obedience, on their part, to secure uninterrupted prosperity 
from Him, who, from time to time, had evinced what great 
power he had to chastise them. Whether the uncongeni- 
ality and inaptitude of man's sinful heart to live and abide 
in communion with an invisible and holy Being, did not very 
materially contribute to make them desire a visible king, 
we shall not here stay to discuss ; but this portion of the 
sacred history may well be regarded as a proof of the deep 
mterest which God liimself takes in all the concerns of this 
visible world, and how intimate and vital is the intercourse 
which he maintains with it ; as also, how little the whole 
bearing of things sublunary is understood by those who 
regard it as a self-working macliinery, that moves without 
the divine interposition. 

(d.) Israel at their most flourishing' Period. 

When Samuel had predicted to the people what they 
had to expect from the king that should reign over them, 
what claims he would exact upon their property and their 
services ; and when, notwithstanding tliis, they persisted 
in their design, that prophet, by divine direction, appointed 
Saul to be their king, and inaugurated him with the holy 
unction. This man was of an obscure family in the tribe 



46 ISRAEL AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

of Benjamin, and his reign was spent in repeated wars 
with the Philistines ; so that not till under David, his 
successor, were the Israelites enabled to effect their 
subjugation. 

Durmg the reign of David, and that of his son Solomon, 
the dominions of Israel were extended far beyond their 
former boundaries. They stretched northward as far as 
Riblah ; north-eastward, they had the Euphrates for their 
boundary ; from thence their confines reached beyond the 
countries of Ammon, Moab, and Edom, to the eastern arm 
of the Red Sea. Westward, the coast of the Mediter- 
ranean was their limit ; Philistia was under their yoke ; 
and Phenicia their willing and serviceable ally. 

David was distinguished both as a man and as a ruler. 
His pious heroism had been early displayed in his combat 
with Goliath ; toward Saul he had conducted himself as a 
faithful and conscientious subject ; and to Jonathan he had 
been a real and tenderly affectionate friend ; noble, also, 
and magnanimous was his behavior toward Saul's de- 
scendants. Even in reviewing his faults and crimes, we 
cannot overlook the humiliation of spirit with which he 
comes forward, and openly before the world acknowledges 
and bewails them; a conduct which, however lightly re- 
garded by many, is in the siglit of God of great price, and 
infinitely more pleasing to him than the self-complacency 
of those, who, tliough they live reputably, are strangers to 
true humility, brokenness of spirit, Christian meekness, 
and charity. Of his sincere piety, dee]) devotional feeling, 
and rich acquaintance with the things of God, we have 
manifold and undoubted testimony in his inimitable Psalms. 
As Israel's ruler, his aim was the happiness of his subjects ; 
and, notwithstanding the many wars he was necessitated 
to carry on, the nation was contented and prosperous under 
his government. He appointed proper ofhcers over the 
people ; he instituted wise arrangements in every depart- 
ment of government ; and he restored and reformed the 



ISRAEL AND THE KINGDOM OP GOD. 47 

Levitical ministrations, after having caused the ark of the 
covenant to be removed to Jerusalem. He constituted that 
city his metropolis. Its greatest ornament was the temple ; 
for the building of which he had amassed prepai^ations, 
and whicli Solomon reared and adorned. This was the 
most important and most august edifice upon earth, and 
was dedicated with sacrifices of twenty-two thousand oxen, 
and one hundred and twenty thousand sheep. Hitherto 
the sanctuary of the people of God, the ark of the covenant, 
with its furniture and appurtenances, had abode in a taber- 
nacle or tent of curtains and skins ; but it was now trans- 
ferred to a magnificent building, for which there had been 
no sparing of ornamental gold, the most sumptuous tapestry, 
and the most valuable furniture of every kind. Indeed, 
the riches of Solomon were so great, that silver in his 
days was little accounted of ; for it appeared plentiful " as 
the stones of the street." The Scriptures speak expressly 
of his having been greater in wealth and wisdom than all 
the kings of the earth, and that every one desired to see 
him and to hear his wisdom. 

Thus the people of Israel had their flourishing period, 
not only as other nations, but far exceUing them. Other 
nations enjoyed but some single, though pre-eminent 
worldly advantage, as power and dominion, riches and 
splendor, commerce and navigation, or the arts and sciences ; 
whereby such nations discovered their natural character, 
and gratified their ambition for some particular kind of 
renown : but Israel, in the age of Solomon, possessed all 
these advantages at once. They were " great among the 
nations," none daring to molest them. Their recent prowess 
overawed, or a considerable standmg army kept down, 
every unfriendly neighbor. Their wealth, with its abund- 
ance of luxuries, was unlimited. Compare 1 Kings x. 
Their ships sailed to different parts of the earth, and they 
brought home the valuable productions of the countries 
they visited. The arts, especially architecture, which they 



'^ ISRAEL AND THE KINGDOM OP GOD. 

learned in part from the Phenicians, had made wonder- 
ful advances among them. In moral and natural phi- 
losophy, political economy, and the science of government, 
as well as in poetry and natural history, Solomon excelled 
all his contemporaries ; for he had understanding, wisdom, 
and various knowledge, as the sand upon the seashore. 
1 Kings iv, 29. Thus his name was celebrated in all the 
surrounding countries, and is so even to this day. But as 
every distinguished nation has had the experience that 
those terrestrial advantages, in which they have sought 
their welfare and glory, have not only been inadequate to 
afford them any true and lasting felicity, but could not 
even prevent their declining and coming to nothing ; nay, 
as such nations, one after another, when they had attained 
the meridian of their glory, have gradually sunk into their 
former night of barbarism or subjection ; so was it in the 
experience of Israel. That people were ready enough, no 
doubt, to envy their heathen neighbors, whose military 
glory, wealth, flourishing commerce, and quiet enjoy- 
ment of the good things of this life, gave them the appear- 
ance of a happy and highly favored people ; and it was 
natural for them to desire that their own privileges, as 
God's favored nation, should be signalized by a superior 
abundance of similar gifts of Providence. God gave them 
their desire ; he allowed them to make an experiment of 
earthly felicity, and thus to learn that fallen and sinful 
man cannot derive true happiness from anything sublunary; 
that all possible blessings of this world can bear no com- 
parison with the least of the things that accompany salva- 
tion, and belong to our eternal peace ; and, moreover, that 
this peace and salvation must be hoped for from nothing 
else but communion of spirit with God himself, through 
him, and him alone, who is the promised Seed, the Son of 
God, the divine Messiah. 

This all-important truth is most strikingly illustrated in 
Solomon's personal history. Pre-eminently as God had 



ISRAEL AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 49 

favored him with every imaginable advantage of a tem- 
poral nature, and had, in this respect, raised him far above 
the rest of mortals, all was insufficient to preserve him 
from folly and guilt. He took to himself "outlandish 
women," wives and concubines, from among the most 
idolatrous heathen, and even from among the Canaanitefs 
themselves. He suffered such women to seduce him to 
the service of their idols, and thus fell away from the Lord 
Jehovah his God. Hence, immediately after his death, 
the nation became miserably rent into two kingdoms : the 
larger part of it having contracted a total disaffection to 
the house of David, which now retained but the two tribes 
of Judah and Benjamin, whose kings were thenceforth 
called kings of Judah; they retained, however, the con- 
quered provinces : the other ten tribes were denominated 
the kingdom of Israel, the seat of whose government was 
first at Shechem, and afterward Samaria. As every di- 
vision of what naturally is but one body, is a proof, and at 
the same time a cause, of intestine weakness, so also was 
it in the case before us. The kingdom of Israel was inces- 
santly distracted with insurrections, and one king was 
successively deposed by another; and as to its foreign 
relations, it was in an almost perpetual struggle, either 
with the Syrians or with the kingdom of Judah. More- 
over, the idolatrous worship that had been introduced by 
its fii'st king, Jeroboam, and which Ahab raised to general 
predominance, consumed the very vitality of the nation ; 
till the whole ten tribes, having become excessively corrupt, 
were at length swept away into captivity by the kings of 
Assyria. Even the line of David's direct descendants, the 
kings of Judah, consisted more of ungodly and idolatrous, 
than of pious and holy persons. And though the Lord had 
raised up in Judah, as also among the ten tribes, a succession 
of prophets, who from time to time "showed unto the 
people their transgi-essions, and to Israel their sins," and 
exhorted them with the most awful warnings, and pathetic 
3 



50 ISRAEL AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

entreaties, to " return" to the living God; nevertheless it 
came to pass, that in Judah, whose was the temple, and 
the law, and the covenants, and a national sanctuary of 
divine institution still abiding among them, the book of the 
law was for a long period so much forgotten and lost, that 
when that sacred volume was found and brought to light 
in the reign of good Josiah, the contemporary of Zoroaster, 
the reading of it occasioned unusual alarm, and a partial 
reformation. During that dark period of national estrange- 
ment from divine truth, the number of the true Israelites 
had become so reduced, that neither were their voices 
publicly heard, nor their teachers at all distinguished. 
Happy would it have been for the Christian church, if, in 
the middle ages, something very like this had not again 
been witnessed ; for then, in like manner, was the word 
of God nearly buried in the darkness of monasteries, and 
remained so till it was brought forth to open day, at the 
glorious Reformation. The fall of the kingdom of Judah 
soon followed that of Israel ; for it had, in like manner, 
become at length fully ripe for those divine judgments, 
of which the power of Babylon was commissioned to be 
the instrument. 

(e.) Israel in their Decline. 

The great Assyro-Babylonian empire had, meanwhile, 
after a succession of centuries, fallen to pieces by its own 
weight ; and out of its ruins had arisen thi*ee new king- 
doms ; that which was called the New-Assyrian empire, 
the independent kingdom of Babylon, and the kingdom of 
the Medes. Of those successive kings of the New- Assyrian 
dynasty, which are noticed in sacred history by the names 
of Pul, 2 Kings xv, 19 ; Tilgath-pileser, 1 Chron. v, 6 ; 
Shalmaneser, 2 Kings xvii, 3 ; Sennacherib, 2 Kmgs xix, 
36; and Esarhaddon, 2 Kings xix, 37; Shalmaneser is he 
who, in the seven hundred and twenty-second year before 
the Christian era, invaded the kingdom of Israel, destroyed 



ISRAEL AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 51 

Samaria, and removed the ten tribes to Ai*menia and 
Media, a few years after the building of Syracuse and 
Rome. The depopulated country, in which but a "/ei^** 
of the men of Israel were suffered to remain, was newly 
peopled by him with heathen settlers, who brought with 
them their respective idolatrous religions. For at that 
period every heathen country had its provincial or national 
god, in which character it was also respected by neighbor- 
ing states ; and proportionably to the confidence with which 
the prosperous condition of any country was ascribed to 
such provincial or national god, was the superadded respect 
wherewith the idol was honored by the neighboring coun- 
tries. Still it was the general pagan notion, that the power 
of every such deity was local, or limited to the country 
where it was immediately worshiped ; in other words, that 
every country had its own distinct tutelary deity. Hence, 
those heathen colonists, from various provinces, that re- 
peopled the land of the ten tribes, regarded Jehovah as no 
more than one of the many gods of the nations, and as having 
no authority beyond the limits of the land of Israel, though 
as one who was to be feared within it. Therefore it came 
to pass that this new heathen population obtained Jewish 
priests to instruct them in Jehovah's ritual, and thus they 
paid their adorations to the true God as one placed by the 
side of the imported gods. Thus, from the motley mixture 
of those settlers with such Israelites as had been left in 
the land sprung the people who were called Samari- 
tans ; whose religion was a compound of Judaism and 
heathenism. 

Some years after this, an attempt was made by Senna- 
cherib, the successor of Shalmaneser, to seize in like man- 
ner the kingdom of Judah ; but its pious sovereign, Heze- 
kiah, humbled himself before God, and obtained a respite 
of punishment to his guilty country ; so that Judah did not 
utterly fall under the divine judgments till about thirty- 
three years later, in the five hundred and eighty-seventb 



52 ISRAEL AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

year before the Christian era; when this kingdom also 
was summarily rebuked for its apostasy. Jerusalem, with 
its temple, was now pillaged and destroyed by Nebuchad- 
nezzar ; the sacred vessels, and the apostate people of Ju- 
dea, were carried away together into Babylon; and, to 
mere human observation, it seemed as if the kingdom of 
God upon earth was come to an end, and as if its few re- 
maining members had been sM^ept away by an imperial 
and idolatrous power. 
y The whole history of the children of Israel, down to 
\ this period of their great humiliation, proclaims aloud the 
i important verity, that to a nation ruined by their sins no 
I external advantages can be of any avail; for such ruin 
I always commences with internal and spiritual corruption, 
/ so that its evil consequences will necessarily appear, let 
outward circumstances be what they may. The oppres- 
sion which Israel endured in Egypt produced in them no 
salutary humiliation ; the wonders which God wrought for 
them in the wilderness served only to make them more in- 
solent and refractory ; his establishment of them in Canaan 
called for their gratitude in vaui ; and their security and 
abundance in the age of Solomon did not render them a 
truly prosperous people. Had the glory of our blessed 
Redeemer consisted only in being a great teacher, and in 
his disseminating a more correct kind of knowledge, as 
some unbelievers at present imagine, then might the Jew- 
ish nation be said to have needed no New Testament Mes- 
siah at all ; inasmuch as the Old Testament had already 
furnished them with knowledge more than sufficient to 
leave them without excuse. They had possessed a Mo- 
ses, who spake with God face to face, as a man talketh 
with his friend ; and a Solomon, who understood all mys- 
teries and all knowledge ; and they had witnessed a suc- 
cession of prophets, who knew the ways of God, and who 
proclaimed his truth. But as the recovery of fallen man 
can be effected only by the influences of the Holy Spirit, 



ISRAEL AND THE KINODOM OV GOD. 53 

which are special blessings of the New Testament dispen- 
sation, they were not to be expected in their full extent 
till the coming of Messiah. Therefore all the Old Testa- 
ment prophets, while they called men to immediate re- 
pentance and conversion, pointed them also to the day of 
Christ, as the day of redemption and salvation ; and all 
the trying experiences, through which God conducted his 
people, were intended to stir up and strengthen in them a 
desire for that promised Redeemer, and for liis kingdom 
of peace. 

Thus the kingdom of God, under the Old Testament, 
was only the beginning of what it was afterward to be- 
come ; and the Old Testament itself was but a preparatory 
institution, designed for preserving a purer knowledge of 
God among his chosen people, and for sustaining in them 
the hope of spiritual and eternal redemption. And shut 
out, as they were by such divine arrangements, from com- 
munion with the darkness of this world, a beam of the light 
of Israel did, from time to time, shed a sort of twilight 
over the surrounding nations, which served as a pledge 
that God would, by and by, vouchsafe a better knowledge 
of himself to the Gentiles also, according as they should 
be able to bear it. Thus was " the queen of the south" 
made acquainted with the true God by her visit to Solo- 
mon, (1 Kings X, 9,) and brought back a reverence for his 
name among her heathen countrymen; and the king of 
Tyre, by his intercourse with David and Solomon, learned 
to present his homage to the God of Israel. 1 Kings v, 7. 
To the Assyrians of Nineveh, God even sent one of his 
prophets, and caused repentance to be successfully preached 
by him among them ; and in Babylon itself, through the 
transplanting of the Jews into that kingdom, the name of 
Jehovah, as " the God of heaven," became not only known 
far abroad, but also highly extolled on various occasions. 
From the light of that purer knowledge which, by such 
means, was diffused tliroughout the Babylonian empire, 



54 TRACES OF EARLIEST CULTIVATION. 

some single rays still lingered even down to the period 
when the promised Messiah personally appeared in our 
nature upon earth. Matt, ii, 1, etc. 

VI.— TRACES OF EARLIEST CULTIVATION. 

Respecting Assyria, Babylon, and Egypt, at this period, 
we have little certain information beyond what the Scrip- 
tures report of them in their connection with the holy peo- 
ple; and as for the rest of the nations, their history is 
enveloped in still greater obscurity. Some of them having 
flourished for a season, were subverted by the righteous 
judgments of God, as the people of Sodom and Gomorrha, 
and the Canaanitish nations: others enjoyed very early 
cultivation, and their chronicles refer to an age very re- 
mote ; but what they relate is mixed with fable concerning 
deified heroes, whose term of life consisted of centuries ; 
and all their pretended records, whether historical or astro- 
nomical, are enigmatical and inexplicable. This is the 
case with the history of the Hindoos, and, in part, with 
that of the Chinese. Other nations lay quite out of the 
compass of history, and remain so to this day ; as the un- 
civilized tribes of Africa, and the Scythian nations in the 
north. Allied to these are the unsettled hordes of Tar- 
tars and Mongolians, which now and then flashed on the 
page of history like scorching and desolating meteors, but 
whose special distinction in the affairs of the world was yet 
future. We look in vain at those early ages for any record 
of the Germanic tribes, which, shortly after the first cen- 
tury of the Christian era, form new ground for secular 
and ecclesiastical history; whereas, the domestic annals 
of several nations which were soon successively to distin- 
guish themselves in the great theatre of the world, had 
long ago commenced ; and the manner of the earliest de- 
velopment of the Persians, Greeks, and Romans, had al- 
ready intimated what a growth of power each of those 
nations would at length attain. The most ancient of par- 



TRACES OF EARLIEST CULTIVATION. 65 

ticular and complete records are the sacred Scriptures, 
and their history of the Jewish people. These records 
we owe to the special providence of God, and to one pe- 
culiar provision of that providence, namely, the early prac- 
tice of the art of writing. This art, however, does not 
appear to have been in use among the very first genera- 
tions of mankind. 

Since man's eai-liest ideas must have been formed from 
sensible objects, as we may see by the manner in which 
uncultivated nations still express their thoughts, there is 
some reason for supposing that the oldest records may have 
been made by means of pictures, or hieroglyphics, such as 
are found on Egyptian monuments. Out of these may 
have originated those signs which express whole words at 
once, a mode of writing which continues among the Chi- 
nese ; next we have the characters which express merely 
syllables, as in Ethiopic ; and lastly, alphabetical writing, 
which was familiar to the Hebrews and the Greeks at a 
very early period ; for Moses himself used it, see Exodus 
xvii, 14; and the ten commandments were written with 
the finger of God on tables of stone. Writmg on vellum 
may not have been quite so ancient, though, in the pas- 
sage last cited, writing in a book is referred to. The 
science of astronomy likewise commenced in very early 
times ; so early that we know not whether the first obser- 
vations of the starry heavens were put together by con- 
templative shepherds on the mountain pastures of Armenia, 
or by Phenician navigators. The Chaldean magi were 
very great observers of the stains, though chiefly for astro- 
logical purposes ; and hereby they became distinguished as 
a peculiar and privileged caste. The periodical inunda- 
tions of the Euphrates and Tigris in Babylonia, and of the 
Nile in Egypt, made it requisite to form large canal banks, 
and other arrangements. This served to stir up the in- 
vention of many for geometry, engineering, and great me- 
chanical contrivances. 



56 TRACES OF EARLIEST CULTIVATION. 

Social settlement in great cities, like those of Nineveh 
and Babylon, was soon attended with its natural conse- 
quence, a variety of luxuries ; and the means for these 
were furnished by the traffic of Phenicia, Avhich had be- 
come a general mart for the productions of all countries. 
While that nation was also distinguishing itself by the in- 
vention of glass, and the celebrated purple dye. Babylonia 
was no less celebrated for its improvements in the manu- 
facture of leather, wool, and linen, and especially for its 
varieties of carpeting and tapestry, and its highly finished 
works in wood and ivory, metal, and precious stones. 
With this rising condition of arts and manufactures was 
connected an increased spread of commerce, which ex- 
tended southward as far as India, westward to Phenicia, 
northward to Assyria and Armenia, and eastward into the 
mountainous districts of Asia. Thus everything conspired 
to render Babylon the mistress of kingdoms. 

Architecture likewise had attained great perfection at 
this period of the world, and its productions bore the cha- 
racters of magnificence on a gigantic scale, even as did 
empire, warfare, and wickedness itself, at the same period : 
whereas the more predominant characteristics of the suc- 
ceeding age were those of taste and elegance ; for govern- 
ments had then become more concerned about domestic 
improvements, and the advancement of knowledge. Nine- 
veh was a city of three days' journey in circumference, 
with walls of extraordinary height and breadth. Babylon, 
though built only of brick, was above sixty or seventy 
miles in circuit; its walls were three hundred and fifty 
feet high, and seventy-five feet broad, with two hundred 
and fifty towers, and one hundred gates ; and in the centre 
of the city stood the temple of Belus with its lofty tower. 
The wonderful buildings of ancient Egypt are well known ; 
its pyramids, obeHsks, temples, columns, and sepulchral 
monuments command still, even in their ruins, the admi- 
ration and the astonishment of travelers; although the 



TRACE* OF EARLIEST CULTIVATION. 57 

lapse of four thousand years has half buried these vast 
relics in the sand. They however, for the most part, con- 
sist of granite and marble; and where to look for the 
buildings upon which the Israelites in their long servitude 
were employed, as makers of bricks, is not sufficiently 
known. Similar to those of Egypt, and perhaps equally 
ancient, are the great Indian temples in Salsette and El- 
lore, which are hewn out of the native rock. All these 
works of architecture bespeak the character of those earlier 
times when colossal bulk and extent were considered the 
expression of greatness ; but men had now begun to aim 
likewise at combining utility, convenience, and beauty with 
such great undertakings. 

The Israelites were attentive to arts and manufactures ; 
and many a recorded instance of their skill and ability 
would be found difficult of imitation, even at the present 
day. The works which Bezaleel and Aholiab (Exod. 
XXXV, 30-35) executed in the wilderness, attest their great 
skill and knowledge. And the temple of Solomon, in taste 
and sumptuousness, vied with every building of its time. 
Thus, if we closely examine, we shall find that, even in 
such things, Israel was the first of the nations; for al- 
though, at a period when measure or bulk was everything, 
this nation was of insignificant size, yet it contained the 
glory of what is intellectual and spiritual ; it had the pro- 
mise of rising to something far greater and without end, 
and thus lived as it were above its time. 

3* 



58 THE BABYLONIAN EMPIRE. 

THIRD PERIOD. 

FROM NEBUCHADNEZZAR TO AUGUSTUS. 

B. C. 588 to 27. 

I.— THE BABYLONIAN EMPIRE. 

The jealousy wliich had prevailed between the New- 
Assyrian and the Babylonian empires at length broke out 
into open war. Media was confederate with Babylon; 
and the Assyrians had leagued with themselves the mari- 
time states of Phenicia, Philistia, and Egypt, which feared 
being swallowed up if the power of Assyria were over- 
thrown. A great battle between the Babylonians and the 
Egyptians, on the banks of the Euphrates, in the year 608 
before Christ, in which the Egyptians sustained a total 
defeat, decided the fate of Assyria, and left Babylon the 
first power in the world. A year afterward Nineveh 
was taken, the prophecy of Nahum fulfilled, and Assyria 
divided between the kingdoms of Media and Babylon. 
About this time Nebuchadnezzar came to the throne, a 
mighty king, of energetic character, with all the pride of 
an Asiatic conqueror and despot. The kingdom of Judea 
had long been enabled to maintain a peaceful contempo- 
rary existence, having either stood in alliance with the 
Babylonian monarch, or chosen neutral ground. But 
zealously as did the prophet Jeremiah warn them against 
perfidiously leaning on Egypt, the last kings of Judah 
ceased not, by infatuated confederations with that country, 
to provoke the powerful king of Babylon, till at length he 
took and destroyed Jerusalem, carried away captive the 
nations at large, and transplanted them into his own 
immediate provinces. The Jews, however, were not 
governed there with rigor, nor treated as slaves. Their 
new situation was tolerable, and even comfortable, as far 



THE BABTLONIAN EMPIRE. 59 

as foreign bread in the mouth of a captive can be without 
a bitter taste. Some of them, who were of royal or 
princely family, Nebuchadnezzar caused to be brought up 
in his own court. It is not probable that this was merely 
a political measure, for the sake of having them under his 
eye, and rendering any intrigues impossible to them ; for 
we may well suppose that, with consciousness of his ex- 
tensive power, he was superior to all apprehensions of 
this sort. Neither was it at first in his contemplation to 
raise those distinguished Jews, whose names are well known, 
Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, to such a height 
of pre-eminence as to intrust them with provincial govern- 
ment in his own great empire. God, however, had selected 
this mighty ruler to show forth in him his own greater power 
and might ; and, by a few simple circumstances, he led him 
to perceive and acknowledge, that all the power and wis- 
dom of Babylon, and of its king, were not to be compared 
for a moment with the endowments of a single servant of 
Jehovah. A dream, in which God symbolically repre- 
sented to him the history of the future empires of the 
world, the whole import, however, of which, except the 
general deep impression of it, had eluded his recollection, 
he required his magi and astrologers to recover and ex- 
plain to him. In such a requirement itself, as also in the 
horrible threats he added for its exaction, w^e behold the 
despotic ruler, accustomed to see his commands and desires 
implicitly obeyed : and who, in the moment of passionate 
displeasure, is wont, at the least opposition or hinderance 
to his will, to do what he has afterward to regret. Had 
not the lives of the magi been preserved by the interven- 
tion of Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar had certainly put them all 
to death, and probably would have bitterly repented of it 
upon occasions when he should feel the need of their coun- 
sel and advice. Here is one instance of that implicit obe- 
dience, by which a Nebuchadnezzar's single will kept the 
bulk of his stupendous empire in order. It is also to be 



60 THE BABYLONIAN EMPIRE. 

observed, with respect to the great image that was shown 
him in his dream, as symboUcal of the empires of the 
world, that its head of gold did not symbolize the Baby- 
lonian power so as to include Nebuchadnezzar's successors, 
but represented this king himself, the period of his single 
reign, which was stamped as so illustrious by the personal 
weight of his own name. " Thou art this head of gold," 
said Daniel, in his interpretation of the dream. This 
preference ascribed to Nebuchadnezzar above the imperial 
powers that arose after hun, appears to have been in some 
measure owing to his recognition of the true God. He 
acknowledged to Daniel, " Of a truth is it that your God 
is a God above all gods, and a Lord above all kings, who 
can thus reveal hidden matters." It is to be lamented, 
that this good confession was overclouded, and seemingly 
forgotten, when he (who, after the oriental pagan custom, 
retained, with a respect for Jehovah, a reverence at the 
same time for his own national idol, Bel) desired the Jewish 
governors of his province to pay the same honor to the image 
of his god which he had conceded to their God; because, 
according to his ideas, a plurality of gods might well consist 
together. But then, it ought not to be overlooked, that, 
after he had seen the striking proof of the miraculous 
deliverance of those three men by their God, he again 
expressed his acknowledgment of Jehovah as the mightiest 
of all gods, and most strictly enjoined his subjects to reve- 
rence the same. 

Elam, or Susa, south-east of Babylon, was already in 
Nebuchadnezzar's power ; and, after taking Jerusalem, he 
sought to extend his dominion to the south-west. Sidon, 
with its territory, fell into his hands, as did likewise, after 
a long struggle, the strong-hold of Tyre. The countries 
of Moab, Amnion, and Edom, could not resist this powerful 
conqueror. Egypt, also, shared at length the same fate as 
Judea ; its colossal cities were occupied by the troops of 
Nebuchadnezzar, and its wealthiest inhal)itant? wei'e trans- 



THE BABYLONIAN EMPIRE. 61 

planted to Babylon. Upon this enlargement of his dominion, 
which rendered him the mightiest monarch of the age, his 
heart became inflated with presumptuous and very impious 
pride, so that he not only forgot that God who had raised 
him to tliis greatness, but even arrogated all imaginable 
glory to himself. On looking down upon the great city 
which he had enriched and adorned with the spoils of his 
conquests, musing upon his vast empire, and his resistless 
power, he exclaimed, " Is not this great Babylon, that I 
have built for the house of the kingdom, by the might of 
my power, and for the honor of my majesty !" Such self- 
exaltation in a man whom God had once taken under his own 
special instruction, and to whom he had made his almighty 
power known, could not pass without divine rebuke. As 
the people of Jehovah now resided in Babylon, this country 
had become the theatre of his miraculous government, to 
which, therefore, Nebuchadnezzar himself must yield. 
God punished him with temporary insanity, so that, like 
the beasts, he dwelt in the open field, and there lay down 
under the dew of heaven, till seven times, or years, had 
passed over him. All his opposition to the power of the 
living God, and to the impressions of the same upon his 
mind and disposition, was now felt to be in vain : the 
" Stronger than he " overcame him, and finally reduced 
him, by severe discipline, to the public and firm acknow- 
ledgment, that Jehovah is the Supreme, that his kingdom 
is an everlasting kingdom, and his dominion enduring for 
ever and ever. He also confessed that all his doings are 
in truth, and his ways judgment ; moreover, that " those 
who walk in pride, he is able to abase." 

Babylon, under Nebuchadnezzar, is the first of the four 
great empires : this was followed by the Medo-Persian ; 
after which arose the Macedonian or Greek empire ; and, 
lastly, that of the Romans. Babylon stood as the head of 
gold in Nebuchadnezzar's vision of the great image; in 
the pursuits of life, it set the fashion to nations : and the 



62 THE BABYLONIAN EMPIRE. 

succeeding empires inherited from it their many earnest 
endeavors after universal dominion and consolidation. 
Thus was Babylon their head and commencement. And, 
indeed, it was gold in comparison with the succeeding 
empires ; for these never so substantially realized their 
desire of universal dominion. In the composition and 
coherence of its several parts and elements, there was less 
frangibility or disruption, more unity and solidity, more 
constitutional strength, grandeur, and vigor, than in the 
rest. It had the majestic nobleness of the lion, and the 
high soaring aspect of the eagle. Its wants were more 
simple, the life of its citizens was more quiet and serene, 
its prosperity was greater. The revelation of God in the 
midst of it was more immediate, plain, and striking ; the 
knowledge of him, though obscurely, yet in a variety of 
ways, broke forth among the people, and was again and 
again brought home to them. The imperfect accounts 
of history do not indeed expressly relate this last par- 
ticular ; but we may conclude from the infalHble word of 
God, that the Babylonian empire was more golden, and 
distinguished by such privileges, than the empires which 
arose after it; at the same time it must always be pre- 
mised, that the aim of worldly power, as such, to draw 
all things to itself, is adverse to the kingdom of God, and 
that, therefore, it is in the way of comparison, and not of 
approbation, that this preference is adjudged to the Baby- 
lonian empire. 

After the death of Nebuchadnezzar, who reigned forty- 
thi'ee years, his son Evil-merodach succeeded to the em- 
pire, and was followed by his brother-in-law Belshazzar, 
(otherwise called Neriglissor, or Labynith II.,) a profligate 
and effeminate prince, not at all adapted to the vigorous 
management of so great an empire. When he had reigned 
four years, the young Persian king, Cyrus, assisted by an 
army of the Medes, took Babylon in the five hundred and 
thirty-eighth year before Christ, and this put an end to 



THE MEDO-PERSIAN EMPIRE. 63 

the Babylonian dominion. The city itself, with the sur- 
rounding country, became, in long process of time, a de- 
sert ; and thus was the prediction of Jeremiah (chap.li, 37) 
literally accomplished. It remains to this day a vast heap 
of rubbish, without a human inhabitant ; it is seldom visited 
by any traveler ; and it is a solitude of astonishment and 
dread. 

Jeremiah had prophesied of Cyrus, the conqueror of 
Babylon, Jer. 1, 44 ; and, still earlier, had Isaiah propheti- 
cally mentioned him by name, chap, xliv, 28 ; xlv, 1, etc. ; 
as an evidence that God holds in his hand the destinies, 
not only of his own chosen people, but likewise of all 
other nations; and that they are made to perform his 
pleasure, though without either intending or being con- 
scious of it. 

IL— THE MEDO-PERSIAN EMPIRE. 

(a.) History of Cyrus- 

Media, wliich was a provincial nation, westward of the 
Tigris, had, by the dismemberment of the old Assyro- 
Babylonian empire, become a separate kingdom ; and had 
grown powerful by the partition of the New- Assyrian em- 
pire. Even the provincial nation of Persia, southward of 
Media, became its tributary. Astyages, who was king of 
the Medes, and father-in-law of Nebuchadnezzar, had 
given his daughter in marriage to Cambyses, prince of 
Persia, and Cyrus was the son of this marriage. Bel- 
shazzar, king of Babylon, had formed an alliance with 
Croesus, king of Lydia, and with other princes, for the 
purpose of dethroning Cyaxares II., (Darius,) king of the 
Medes, to whose assistance came his young nephew Cyrus, 
with a valiant band of Persian mountain wai'riors, and de- 
feated the allied forces of Lydia and Babylonia. The 
Lydians fled back to their own country. The kingdom 
of Lydia had attained to great prosperity and extent under 



64 THE MEDO-PERSIAN EMPIRE. 

the government of Croesus, whose wealth became prover- 
bial. In this kingdom was comprised a large part of Asia 
Minor: and, as a mercantile state, its central situation, 
with respect to Europe, Asia, and Africa, was a most con- 
venient one. Its metropolis was Sardis ; the same Sardis 
which is mentioned in the New Testament. But as riches 
beget luxury, and luxury brings on weakness and effemi- 
nacy, so the liydians had become unable to withstand the 
fierce mountain troops of Cyrus. They were totally de- 
feated ; Sardis was taken ; Croesus was made prisoner, but 
treated with mildness ; and Cyrus now hastened back to- 
ward Babylon, to chastise it in like manner. He diverted 
the course of the Euphrates, which hitherto had flowed 
through the midst of the city ; and, by this manoeuvre, his 
warriors were enabled to march into it by surprise, on the 
shallow bed of the river. Thus, like a sudden tempest, 
he fell upon the king and his courtiers, at the time they 
were holding a great banquet, the mirth of which had in- 
deed, just before, been awfully interrupted by the miracu- 
lous hand-writing upon the wall, and by Daniel's interpre- 
tation of the same. Belshazzar was slain in the conflict, 
and Cyrus handed over the lordship of Babylon to his 
uncle Cyaxares II., (Darius,) and marched back into 
Persia. 

Under the government of Cyaxares, who divided his 
great empire into one hundred and twenty provinces, the 
prophet Daniel held an important civil station ; and was, 
by the marvelous interposition of God, preserved from the 
insidious machinations of envious heathen opponents, who 
had circumvented the weak monarch. This miraculous 
deliverance of Daniel induced Cyaxares to repeat, in the 
face of all his subjects, the same humble acknowledgment 
of the God of Israel which had been before expressed by 
Nebuchadnezzar. It was in the beginning of the reign of 
this Medo-Persian king, that Daniel received the import- 
ant disclosure concerning the seventy weeks ; even as, in 



THE MEDO-PERSIAN EMPIRE. 65 

the time of Belshazzar, he had foreseen the destinies of the 
four gi'eat empires, (and the near approaching fate of the 
Persian in particular,) in the symbolical vision of various 
beasts of prey. Dan. vii. Cyaxares, after a reign of seven- 
teen years, retired into private life ; and Cyrus, who mean- 
while had become his son-in-law, by marrying his daugh- 
ter, succeeded to the government of the united empire of 
Media, Persia, and Babylonia. To all the countries which 
had been subjected to the sceptre of Nebuchadnezzar, were 
now added, under Cyrus, those of Media, Persia, and the 
Lesser Asia. The vanquished nations were treated for- 
bearingly by Cyrus; but their princes were detlironed, 
and replaced by satraps, or provincial governors, specially 
chosen and appointed by himself. Though such appoint- 
ments served for awhile to keep the whole empire more 
together under the will and law of a single ruler, yet they 
tended ultimately to the production of many discontents 
and partial revolts, which gave, however, not so much 
trouble to Cyrus himself as to his successors ; for he, 
through his personal influence, and the respect in which 
he was held for his heroic deeds, remained in undisturbed 
possession of the countries of which he had become master; 
and, during his whole reign, he found leisure to concert 
means for establishing his dominion, and especially by 
strengthening and multiplying the bands of commercial 
intercourse. He died in his own palace, at Persepolis ; 
though some historians assert that he was slain in an ex- 
pedition against the Massagette. 

(b.) End of the Bahylonisli Captivity. 

Cyrus, likewise, though the heathen historians give no 
account of it, did not omit to make an acknowledgment of 
the true God. Probably he had learned from Daniel the 
miraculous demonstrations of Jehovah's power, which were 
given to Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, and Darius. It is 
also probable that he had heard of Jeremiah's prophecy, 



66 THE MEDO-PEKSIAN EMPIRE. 

that the captivity of the Jews in Babylon should termi- 
nate after its continuance for seventy years ; for, in the 
very first year of his autocracy, he issued throughout his 
dominions the following edict : — " The Lord God of hea- 
ven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth ; and he 
hath charged me to build liim a house at Jerusalem. 
Who is there among you of all his people ? his God be 
with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, and build the 
house of the Lord God of Israel. He is the God." At 
the same time he required all his subjects to help the de- 
parting Israelites with silver and gold, with goods and 
with beasts, besides the other things which they might 
give as a free-will offering for the temple of God that is 
m Jerusalem. He himself gave up the five thousand four 
hundred golden and silver vessels of the house of the Lord, 
which Nebuchadnezzar had brought away from Jerusalem, 
and placed in the house of his gods ; and he gave the Jews 
the requisite cedar timber from Mount Lebanon. But 
the greater part of the Israelites had become so domesti- 
cated in Assyria and Babylon, that they had no heart to 
exchange their prosperous and comfortable situation for 
the laborious and hazardous enterprise of removal to a far 
distant territory, or for the inconveniences of settlement in 
a desolated country. Only forty-two thousand families, 
and these prmcipally of the tribes of Judah, Benjamin, and 
Levi, availed themselves of the king's edict, and set out on 
a march to the demolished city, under the conduct of their 
prince Zerubbabel, and their high priest Joshua, to rebuild 
in the first place the temple of the God of Israel. What 
became of the great body of the Israelites that stayed be- 
hind in the countries of their captivity, and into what parts 
of the world their descendants dispersed themselves, re- 
main a mystery to this day. 

The new temple could not, of course, equal that of Solo- 
mon in magnificence ; and the old men, who in their youth 
had seen the former temple, could not refrain from tears 



THE MEDO-PERSIAN EMPIRE. 67 

and loud lamentations over the inferiority of the latter. 
There was, moreover, the hostility of the Samaritans, who 
had officiously proffered their assistance in the building, 
but had been repulsed on account of their communion with 
idolatrous heathenism, and who hence sought to impede 
the work in every possible way, so that it went on slowly. 
Under Cambyses, (Aliasuerus,) the successor of Cyrus, 
the building was discontinued by an imperial edict, so that 
it was not completed until the sixth year of Darius Hys- 
taspes, five hundi'ed and sixteen years before Chiist, after 
that Ezra the scribe had brought from Babylon the rest 
of the vessels of the house of the Lord, and had effected 
the arrangements of divine service, the priesthood, and 
civil order. The two prophets, Haggai and Zechariah, 
had faithfully helped to this by their inspired and stirring 
exhortations and encouragements, and had raised the spirits 
of the depressed Jews by their prophecies of the coming 
period of Israel's national glory. And after Nehemiah, 
who was cupbearer and state minister to the Persian 
monarch, had arrived as governor at Jerusalem, which 
during the captivity and till now had been as an unwall- 
ed village, the dilapidated walls of that city were again 
raised up. 

Returning from the history of the Jews to that of the 
Medo-Persian empire, we observe, that Cyrus was suc- 
ceeded in the government of the Medo-Persian empire by 
his son Cambyses, a cruel tyrant, who not only prosecuted 
his father's conquests, and recovered Egypt from its revolt, 
but also enterprised the subjugation of Ethiopia and Libya ; 
in which, however, he was unsuccessful. He died by ac- 
cidentally falhng upon his own sword, and was succeeded 
in the empire by Darius the son of Hystaspes, who had 
married the daughter of Cyrus. This prince extended the 
Persian dominions as far as the Indus, and northward as 
far as Greece ; but hereby incurred a conflict with the 
Greeks, which was continued by them with his successors, 



68 THE MEDO-PERSIAN EMPIRE. 

until Alexander put an end to the Medo-Persian empire. 
In this manner the theatre of history became transferred 
from the East to Europe. 

(c.) History of the Greeks. 

The country of Greece was peopled at a very early pe- 
riod. Even about the time of Noah's death, the national 
family of Ashkenaz, the son of Gomer and grandson of 
Japheth, emigrated through Lesser Asia to Europe, and 
settled in the regions which lie south of that great chain of 
Alps which runs through Europe into Spain : also in 
Greece there remained traces of their settlement. Soon 
afterward followed the descendants of Javan, (whose name 
is still preserved in that of Ionia,) with their four national 
families, Elisha, Tarshish, Chittim, and Dodanim: these 
settled principally in the country which is still called 
Greece. Whether to Tarsliish we may think of tracing 
Tarsus in Cilicia, or Tartessus in Spain, or to Elisha, 
Hellas, (Greece,) or theElisoBan Islands, (in the Atlantic,) 
or to Dodanim, Dodona, is more or less uncertain. The 
descendants of Tiras, the youngest son of Japheth, settled 
probably in the north and north-east of Greece, as Thrace, 
lUyria, &c. We know of no more particulars relative to 
these earliest settlers of Greece ; even what is recorded of 
the first founders of its several states, as Cecrops, Danaus, 
Cadmus, and Pelops, is mixed with fable. This is partly 
owing to the nature of their religion, according to which 
they imagined to themselves a kind of human gods ; and 
had besides these a multitude of demi-gods, or heroes, whom, 
after their death, they deified on account of immortal 
deeds ascribed to them. In later ages, it has not been 
possible to ascertain whether these had ever existed as 
men, or whether they were creatures of imagination. 

It is uncertain whence the Greeks derived their idola- 
trous and mythological religion ; but, probably, it may be 
traced to the gradual corruption of the primitive patriarchal 



THE MEDO-PERSIAN EMPIRE. 69 

faith, which acknowledged one God, but became more and 
more invested with objects of sense, in proportion as the 
people sunk away into sensualities. As at first they owned 
but one God, so they called him Zeus, that is, the Living 
One; who, even in their later polytheism, was always 
regarded as supreme. As true doctrines gradually dwin- 
dled and disappeared, by traditions becoming deformed 
and obscure, all consistency and proportion of religious 
faith were at length distorted and perverted, in this as in 
every other nation. Their recognition of dependence on 
the true God was forgotten : the Deity was now represented 
as dependent on men, and was expected to approve of all 
and everything which the sensual and circumscribed ideas 
of our fallen nature, the extravagance of the imagination, 
or priestcraft itself, might choose to make of him ; and he 
was required to tolerate each idol which its inventors and 
abettors might be pleased to set up by the side of him. 
Thus new gods were formed after the human image, or 
after the likeness of inferior creatures. Thus Zeus, or 
Jupiter, was, after the manner of men, furnished with a 
wife, named Hir^, or Juno, to whom special functions were 
attributed. Thus to Zeus and Here at first were severally 
appropriated a variety of names, indicative of the respective 
duties which they were supposed to undertake ; but, in 
process of time, these names were separated from those to 
whom they were at first given, and distinct gods and god- 
desses were supposed to exist, discharging the offices im- 
plied by those names. The more the knowledge of the 
one living and true God disappeared, the more men's ideas 
of Deity were modeled after human notions ; and, accord- 
ing to human weakness and appointment, the more was 
the being of God notionally divided and subdivided into 
gods many, and lords many ; till at length it came to this, 
that every tree, fountain, and grove had its special deities ; 
and men even built an altar to the unknown god. Acts xvii, 
23. All nature was animated with distinct divinities, 



70 THE MEDO-PERSIAN EMPIRE. 

which, according to legendary tradition, frequently appeared 
visibly to men, and entered into familiar intercourse with 
them. It is asserted, indeed, that this was all merely 
poetical. Poetical indeed it was, if by that word is meant 
imaginary or feigned ; but sacred history, as contained in 
the Scriptures, presents far more that is truly impressive 
and sublime than anything which heathen fable supplies. 
In the sacred narrative we find God actually appearing 
among men, condescending to become Abraham's guest, 
and conversing with Moses " as a man talketh with hia 
friend." In sacred history we find angels all along main- 
taining intercourse with men, and the Son of God himself 
at length becoming man. Sacred history, then, has much 
more of true poetry in it, and is truth itself; not to men- 
tion, that to the gods of Greece were attributed every 
passion and gratification of our corrupt nature, yea, even 
those which are of the coarsest animal kind. Accordingly, 
the youth of Greece, when initiated in the practices and 
mysteries of its religion, learned at once to know and to 
love all manner of sins and vices ; and it is even asserted, 
that such gods were only sensible representations of im- 
portant laws of nature and morals. It is possible, indeed, 
that Greeks of the more reflecting and contemplative class 
might associate with them such ideas ; it is possible, that 
some further baseless fabric of meaning was concealed in 
them ; still, in what light we are to regard the idol super- 
stition of the Greeks, we may learn from the word of God 
itself, as it is written in Rom. i, 18. If the wiser indi- 
viduals among them cherished a glimmering of purer light, 
(for it is possible that, even among their priests, some 
purer occult doctrine was originally propagated, which, 
however, as there is but too abundant proof, must have 
soon become very much degenerated ;) if traces of such 
better knowledge were found even on their public monu- 
ments, as the inscription on the temple of Apollo at Delphi, 
" Know thyself 1" yet all this is insufficient to alter, in the 



THE MEDO-PERSIAN EMPIRE. 71 

least degree, our opinion of the whole system. Even the 
purer doctrine of a Socrates cannot be ascribed to the 
common national creed ; on the contrary, it stood decidedly 
opposed to it ; and his own acknowledgment, " I know that 
I know nothing," was no more than true, though Christians 
may well be ashamed to say it after him. Compare John 
xvi, 13 ; Eph. i, 8, 9 ; iii, 9-11, 17-19 ; iv, 13-15 ; Col. i, 
25-28 ; ii, 2, 3 ; 1 John ii, 20-27. 

The most ancient race of Greeks were the Pelasgi. 
Among them, perhaps, were mingled many of the Canaan- 
ites, Avho, fleemg from Joshua's mvasion, first thronged the 
towns on the seacoast of Palestine, until theii' numbers 
becoming inconvenient, they emigrated to new settlements 
in the islands of the Grecian Archipelago, and on the 
coasts of Greece. lonians and Achaeans arrived after 
them ; and, at the period when the annals of the country 
are more worthy of credence, the various component parts 
of the Greek population, belonging to earlier as well as 
later antiquity, had become so blended, as to be no 
longer distinguishable by any certam genealogical charac- 
teristics. 

The account of the Argonautic expedition, 1281 years 
B. C, Usher, to the gold country of Colchis, has never yet 
been properly divested of its fabulous embellishments. 
There is something more of historical ground in the tra- 
dition of the ten years' siege and subjugation of Troy, in 
the country of Troas, (Acts xvi, 8,) which is situate in the \ 
north-west of Asia Minor, by Grecian heroes, 1194-1184 I 
B. C, about the time of the birth of David. This supposed \ 
event, however, owes most of its present celebrity to the 
epic poems of Homer, the father of Grecian poetry. Fifty 
years later, arose the state of Thessaly, in the noi-th of 
Greece ; and that of Boeotia, to the south of Thessaly. At 
the same period was the Greek peninsula (Peloponnesus) 
colonized by the Dorians. Here grew up, in process of 
time, the states of Corinth, Elis, Arcadia, Messene, and 



\ 



72 THE MEDO-PERSIAN EMPIRE. 

Sparta. Near to Corinth, which was the entrance of the 
Peloponnesus, and Boeotia, in the north, was the country 
of Attica, with Athens its metropolis. 

The character and condition of these states present a 
totally different appearance from those of the eastern na- 
tions. Li these we notice the endeavor to unite and con- 
solidate what is manifold and heterogeneous : in the former, 
the endeavor to render multiform what is individual or 
homogeneous. In the latter, everything was done to ren- 
der the institutions durable and unchanged : in the former, 
there is the most multifarious change of form and linea- 
ment. The latter relied upon gi-eat masses and corporeal 
force : the former, upon the excellence of their interior 
structure, their intellectual strength, and their moral 
courage. In the East predominated the character of what 
is great, gigantic, and astonishing : in Greece, that of the 
beautiful, the ornamental, the pleasing, the tasteful. Govern- 
ment, in the East, was despotic ; the will of one man held 
all together ; the people was but a mass without a will of 
its own, and put in motion by the beck of its despotic 
governor. In the Grecian states, the people had a will, 
and dared to utter it ; they were their own governors : the 
human mind there developed itself freely and unrestrained ; 
made the highest attempts in art and science, political 
wisdom, and the refinements of civil life. Grecian refine- 
ment and cunning became proverbial ; the fine arts of 
Greece are admired to this day, as the models for all na- 
tions. Orpheus, Homer, Pindar, ^schylus, Sophocles, are 
still renowned among its poets ; Herodotus and Thucydides 
among its historians ; Isocrates and Demosthenes its orators ; 
Zeuxis, Parrhasius, and Apelles, its painters ; Phidias and 
Praxitiles among its sculptors. Greek philosophy, with 
its Pythagoras, its Plato, and its Aristotle, was the only 
intellectual leaven that set in motion the inert mass of the 
dark middle ages. Greek science was the forerunner of 
our Reformation ; Grecian mind prevails still in our 



THE MEDO-PERSIAN EMPIRE. 73 

schools of learning, in our whole system of education, and 
has incalculable influence in forming the spirit of our age 
and of our habits. But even this attempt to derive the 
welfare of mankind from the powers of human intellect, 
no less than that of the East to derive it from mere phy- 
sical strength, was to be put to shame. For, after all, it 
was nothing more than the corrupt nature of the animal 
man, whicli, under the pretext of intellectual culture and 
elevation, sought to make itself the source of all good, 
as the moral habits of the Greeks plainly showed : and 
the great influence which the Grecian character has gained 
over the formation of man in the West is sufficiently ac- 
counted for, from the enmity of the natural man against 
God and against his law ; which enmity, the selfishness we 
here speak of nourishes and increases. 

Greece very early acquired considerable influence 
abroad, by the moral culture and improvement of its co- 
lonies, planted here and there on the shores of the Medi- 
terranean. Commerce and manufactures, art and science, 
civil polity and popular liberty, all of the truly Grecian 
kind, flourished and extended in every direction. On the 
western coast of Asia Minor it planted the cities of Smyr- 
na, Ephesus, and Miletus ; in the south of Italy, the cities 
of Magna Grgecia ; in Sicily, those of Messene and Syra- 
cuse ; and in Africa, that of Cyrene. In the islands of 
Sardinia and Corsica, in Spain and the south-eastern part 
of Gaul, in Macedonia and Thrace, it also had colonial 
cities. All these widely dispersed, but component parts 
of the Greek population, were closely allied with one 
another, by community of language, religion, and man- 
ners. 

The most influential states of Greece were Athens and 
Sparta; between which was situated the flourishing city 
of Corinth. In Sparta, (the legislation of Lycurgus being 
dated at about 900 B. C.,) the welfare of the people was 
aimed at in the perfecting of physical strength, by habitu- 



74 THE MEDO-PERSIAN EMPrRE. 

ating them to a hardy and simple manner of life. The 
early and constant inuring of every individual member of 
the state to masculine and self-denying exercises was en- 
acted by law, as the indispensable means of raising and 
consolidating a national vigor, that should serve as the 
best defense against all foreign invasion. Corinth, on the 
other hand, sought its security and prosperity in wealth 
and commerce; while Athens aimed at an undisturbed 
national enjoyment, which continually went on toward the 
highest pitch of refinement. She was not anxious to wrest 
to herself dominion and predominance by force of arms, 
but sought intellectual superiority by education, polished 
manners, taste, and cultivation of the arts ; and this supe- 
riority she indeed attained. When her political import- 
ance and lustre had long disappeared, her approbation in 
the fine arts was anxiously courted, and that even by the 
tyrant Nero. Her wisely constructed polity was given 
""•sf^ her by Solon, about the time that Jerusalem was destroyed 
by Nebuchadnezzar, B. C. 587. But however high the 
degree of human wisdom which the culture of the Greeks 
attained, still their history showed that the secret main- 
spring of all their exertions was selfishness ; for the states 
of Greece were continually at strife with one another, as 
to which should have pre-eminence and dominion over the 
rest ; and it was only the invasion of some common ene- 
my that served to I'cpress for awhile the activity of this 
mutual jealousy and ambition, Athens was powerful by 
an excellent maritime force, great wealth, superior cultiva- 
tion, and artful i)olicy : Sparta, by her hardily trained and 
experienced military, and by her iron firmness. In Athens 
nearly the whole population had a voice in the govern- 
ment : a privilege which stirred in the private individual 
a spirit of self-confidence and ambition, and a wakeful en- 
deavor after every personal ability and qualification. In 
Sparta the whole community became as one man, through 
rigid obedience to public discipline : for this obedience was 



THE MEDO-PERSIAN EMPlRSJ. 75 

not mere mechanical conformity, much less was it the 
compelled obedience of timid eastern slaves ; but it was 
the free obedience of principle : inasmuch as every indi- 
vidual regarded himself as a vital part and parcel of the 
commonwealth, and his heart beat high with patriotism, 
valorous pride, and contempt of death. 

(d.) Conjlict of Greece with Persia. 

Such were the condition, habits, and manners of the 
people against whom Darius Hystaspes, king of Persia, 
ventured to declare war. The people of Athens had pro- 
voked his displeasure, and Darius was resolved to chastise 
them. He sent out a large armed force, which invaded 
the territory of the Athenians before they could sufficiently 
prepare to resist them. This surprise put them at first to 
a panic, but they soon rallied ; and, under the conduct of 
Miltiadcs, they attacked the Persians, compared with whom 
they were but as a handful of people. But what could be 
expected of a host, however numerous, when composed of 
military slaves, who fight because they are compelled to 
do it, and spend their rage in the first onset ; but who, be- 
cause no great-minded common interest inspires them, soon 
lose all courage against a band of freemen, every one of 
whom knows what he means to do, and that he has to 
struggle for the very existence of his family and native 
home, as well as for his own personal honor and life ! The 
Persians were totally beaten and put to flight, leaving all 
the immense wealth of their luxurious camp to the plunder 
of the Greeks. This momentous victory, however, served 
as an occasion for discovering how easily those who feel 
no gratitude to God can be ungrateful to human benefac- 
tors. Miltiades, the successful hero of Marathon, was, not 
long afterward, for being less successful in a second under- 
taking, brought to trial as a criminal, and thrown into 
prison, where he died. This may remind us, that the ut- 
most civil refinement is no preservative against errors of a 



76 THE MEDO-PERSIAN EMPIRE. 

perverse and deceived heart ; and that the wisest civil 
constitution, when not based on the law of the living God, 
can admit of the grossest civil blunders. 

Before Darius could complete his renewed armament 
against the Greeks, he died ; leaving his vast dominions 
to his son Xerxes, who in Scripture history is called Aha- 
suerus. His sovereignty extended from India to Ethiopia, 
and consisted of one hundred and twenty-seven provinces. 
His magnificence and power, his sumptuousness and pride, 
are brilliantly described in history. But all was rather 
superficial than solid ; it wanted interior strength and firm- 
ness. During his reign the Jews in Babylonia, and in the 
rest of his dominions, were in great danger of utter ex- 
tinction ; but were preserved by the intervention of Esther, 
a noble woman of their nation, whom Xerxes had chosen 
for his queen, and who obtained for Mordecai, her Jewish 
relative and guardian, the office of prime minister, with 
license for her nation securely to avenge themselves on all 
their personal enemies. But respecting any public ac- 
knowledgment on the part of Xerxes concerning God, the 
living God, history has recorded nothing. Hence the 
deep humiliation which he had to undergo. He had in- 
herited from his father the war with Greece, and he pre- 
pared an immense host, large enough to vanquish ten times 
the number of Greeks, had it only been as valiant and 
well-ordered as it was numerous. It was raised out of 
fifty-six different nations, and consisted of one million 
seven hundred thousand men of arms. The march of this 
vast army across the Hellespont upon two bridges of 
boats occupied seven whole days. But its vanguard had 
no sooner reached the narrow pass of Thermopylse, where 
the Spartan king, Leonidas, with a handful of brave war- 
riors, sacrificed his life to the welfare of his country, than 
it sustained considerable loss. In the naval battle near 
Salamis, in which the Athenian general Themistocles was 
commander-in-chief of the Greek forces, the host of Xerxes 



THE MEDO-PERSIAN EMPIRE. 77 

was totally defeated ; and, like Napoleon in modern times, 
who escaped from Russia on a sledge, did Xerxes, affright- 
ed at Grecian valor, retreat precipitately from the scene 
of conflict in a small boat, and escaped to Persia. Only 
three hundred thousand of his men did he leave behind in 
Thessaly: but these also were entirely routed by the 
Spartan general Pausanias in the battle of Plataea ; and, 
on the selfsame day, another Greek force destroyed the 
whole Persian fleet on the coasts of Asia Minor. Xerxes 
was assassinated : and, during the reigns of his successors, 
Artaxerxes Longimanus, (Artasastha,) Xerxes II., Darius 
n., Ai'taxerxes II., Artaxerxes III., down to Darius Codo- 
mannus, who was vanquished by Alexander, the Persian 
empire was overrun with disorders, insurrections, fratricides, 
and horrors of every description. 

The Greeks, and especially the Athenians, having be- 
come inordinately elated by these victories, to which had 
been added one more under Cimon the son of Miltiades, 
who defeated the Persians by sea and land near the river 
Eurymedon in Asia Minor ; and Athens, under Pericles, 
about 440 B. C, having attained the summit of her glory 
and prosperity, her plunge into deep humiliation soon en- 
sued. For now commenced the Peloponnesian war, which 
lasted twenty-seven years; in which, after experiencing 
manifold vicissitudes, Athens was at length conquered and 
taken by Sparta ; after which she never was able to 
recover her former power and military glory. Still her 
intellectual advantages, her pre-eminence in arts and 
sciences, could not be wrested from her ; for, at that very 
period, she could in this respect boast of her greatest and 
most distinguished men, whose renown has been transmit- 
ted through every age to the present times. Architecture 
and sculpture, the few and shattered memorials of which 
are still the admiration of the world, were then in their 
highest perfection. Her greatest orators, historians, and 
philosophers, also lived during this period. Pre-eminent 



78 THE MEDO-PERSIAN EMPIRE. 

among the latter was Socrates ; who, in the midst of idola- 
try, emerged to the clear conviction, which he was bold 
enough to profess, that only one God governs the world. 
Plato, also ; who probably, in his extensive travels, had 
obtained a sight of some of the sacred writings possessed 
by the people of God, left to his numerous disciples a doc- 
trine purer than that of heathenism in general, concerning 
God as the fountain of all good. 

Sparta stood for awhile at the head of Grecian power ; 
but was soon recovered from it by the Thebans, under 
Pelopidas and Epaminondas. Thus did one state in 
Greece become the oppressor of another, and the internal 
weakness which this at length produced made it easy for 
a foreign aggressor to subdue the whole country, and to 
teach the Greeks, by painful experience, that selfish prin- 
ciples are the root of all mischief. 

(e.) Macedon and Alexander the Great. 

Macedon, in the north of Thessaly, had formed itself 
into an independent state from the commencement of the 
ninth century before the Christian era; and its absolute 
monarch, in the year 360 B. C, was Philip, a man of gi'eat 
ambition, especially for conquest and the extension of his 
dominion. He succeeded in adding to it Illyria, Pseonia, 
Thessaly, and Thrace ; and a similar fate now imminently 
threatened Greece itself. He lost no opportunity, by 
adulation and bribery, to mingle himself with its affairs, in 
order to establish his interests in that country. The cele- 
brated orator Demosthenes was, indeed, unwearied in most 
urgently and eloquently warning the Greeks, and especially 
the Athenians, against all intercourse with him ; for he 
had clearly perceived the king's ambitious designs ; but the 
Athenian people were become too thoughtless and fickle to 
be rallied back to sober and serious consideration. At length 
Philip poured his disciphned and veteran troops into the 
Grecian territories, and gained, in the battle of Chseronea, 



THE MEDO-PERSIAN EMPIRE. 79 

387 years B. C, a complete victory over the united Greeks. 
There was now no obstacle to prevent his governing them 
with despotic power ; but he generously permitted them to 
preserve their own forms of government, and desired only 
to be chosen general of the Greeks to assail the Persians ; 
for it was to the conquest of the Persian empire that his 
ambitious views were mainly directed. But, before he 
could engage in this vast enterprise, he died by the hand 
of an assassin. The chastisement of Persia was thus 
delayed, but only for a short season ; for his son Alexan- 
der had inherited from his father not only the kingdom, 
but also his plans and his ambition, and was just the man 
to execute what his father had begun. With all the 
accomplishments of a hardy education and training for 
heroic exj)loits, he had not been neglected with respect to 
the cultivation of his mind. The celebrated philosopher 
Aristotle was his preceptor, and the poems of Homer had 
enraptured his ambitious spirit. Thus, his ardent thirst of 
renown had increased more and more ; and nothing would 
satisfy liim but distinction as a mighty conqueror. It is 
related of him, that upon hearing of any new victory ob- 
tained by his father, he exclaimed with emotion, " My 
father will leave me nothing to conquer !" and that, some 
years after, when he himself had overrun half the world with 
his victories, he was dejected at the thought that he should 
soon conquer the remainder, and have nothing to do. Thus 
was he from his youth instigated by that spirit of Baby- 
lonian despotism, that would break down every natural 
partition wall between nation and nation, and unite the 
whole population of the globe under one head ; though it 
is not likely that he, any more than others of the world's 
conquerors, could foresee the unhappy and destructive 
consequences which must necessarily ensue from such a 
union of all nations. " God hath set eternity* in man's 

* ft^S^n' Eccles. iii, 11, Heb. 



80 THE MEDO-PERSIAN EMPIRE. 

heart," saith the Scripture; that Is, there is in the human 
heart an insatiable longing, that can be allayed by nothing 
less than a gratification which is everlasting; and what 
gratification can be such, except that of communion with 
the everlasting God? But most persons misunderstand 
this insatiableness of the human soul, and seek to quiet their 
own with things visible and finite, that is, with something 
less than God, and therefore apart from God: such as 
riches, of which they can never amass enough; or sensual 
enjoyment, which at best only momentarily diverts this 
craving appetite, but which, so far from satisfying it, serves 
sooner or later to increase its uneasiness ; or with mere 
knowledge and science, but this never satisfies it ; or with 
the honor which cometh from men, and hath an end ; or 
with the enlargement of power, in pursuing which we 
always descry a superior. All these various kinds of 
endeavors are vain, for they cannot fill up the abyss oi 
the soul's desire. Its thirst still remains secretly unallayed ; 
and when it passes into the invisible world, where all those 
earthly means by which it has sought to satisfy or deafen 
the clamors of its ardent desire are fallen away, then does 
this desire, as we see in the case of Dives, break out into 
flaming and tormenting fire. They only who satiate their 
souls' desires with the infinite excellences of God, with the 
saving knowledge of divine truth, and with the "meat 
indeed," and the " drink indeed," of spiritual life, can find 
that true contentment which renders them happy here and 
hereafter. 

Alexander sought to allay the thirst of his inmost soul by 
being conqueror of the world ; and had to experience, in 
attempting it, that the immortal spirit suffers want amid an 
overflow of earthly sustenance. He enterprised with only 
thirty-four thousand men the overthrow of the great Persian 
empire. But then his soldiers were practiced and hardy 
veterans ; all fired with the spirit of their king — the spirit 
of greediness for worldly glory, and every one of them 



THE MEDO-PERSIAN EMPIRE. 81 

was a match for every ten of the effeminate and slavish 
Persians. Darius Codomannus, a good-natured but weak 
prince, employed all possible means to avert the approach- 
ing destruction of his empire ; but, in the very first battle, 
at the river Granicus, in Lesser Asia, his army was de- 
feated by Alexander; and near the little town of Issus, 
in Ciiicia, where Darius himself fought in person, he lost 
a second battle in encountering the heroes of Macedon, and 
fled into the heart of his empire. Alexander marched his 
army along the coast of the Mediterranean, and thus gave 
the king of Persia time to collect re-enforcements; for 
he had already such confidence in his own prowess and 
good fortune, that he made sure of becoming master of 
Persia. Every city he reached on his march surrendered 
to him ; only the inhabitants of Tyre, whose city, since its 
destruction by Nebuchadnezzar, had been rebuilt, not on 
its former site, but on an islet at a little distance from it, 
and which they deemed impregnable, held out against him; 
but in vain. Alexander was not the man to leave any 
enterprise unaccomplished: he constructed a causeway 
from the continent to the island, and by this means he 
took and razed the city. Thus was fulfilled the prophecy 
concerning Tyrus, in the twenty-seventh chapter of 
Ezekiel. 

The government of Jerusalem had, since the rebuilding of 
the temple, been in the hands of its successive high priests ; 
and it does not appear that the descendants of those who 
had returned from the captivity acted any considerable 
part in the public affairs of the world at large. They 
were still but a small and not a strong nation, and had 
enough to do with attending to themselves. But as the 
people of God were appointed to stand in a certain con- 
nection with all the great empires of the world ; with the 
Babylonian, the Medo-Persian, the Macedo- Grecian, and 
the Roman ; partly in the way of acting influentially upon 
them, and partly in the way of being chastened by them ; 
4* 



82 THE MEDO-PERSIAN EMPIRE. 

they were not to remain altogether untouched by the vic- 
torious march of Alexander. And for once at least in hia 
life was this haughty chieftain to feel the nearness of the 
glory of the God of Israel, that an occasion might be given 
him for doing homage to His superior majesty, even as 
Nebuchadnezzar and the earlier Persian kings had done. 
The Jewish historian Josephus relates, that Alexander had 
dispatched a message to Jerusalem, to Jaddua the high 
priest, inviting him and all his people voluntarily to come 
over to the Macedonian conqueror. Jaddua returned an- 
swer, that it would be treachery and ingratitude for him- 
self and his people, of their own will, to revolt from the 
Persian government, by which they had been treated with 
kindness ; and that they could only yield to it by compul- 
sion. Therefore, after Alexander had taken Gaza, he 
marched before Jerusalem, in the year 332 B. C, and 
Jaddua surrendered to him the city when he saw that 
all opposition was hopeless. According to the liberal 
custom of the Greeks, who allowed every national god its 
own rights and privileges, (see Acts xvii, 23,) Alexander 
brought an offering unto Jehovah, in the temple at Jeru- 
salem, as the high priest had instructed him ; and the high 
priest showed him also, in the sacred books, the prediction 
of the prophet Daniel, which related to the new Grecian 
empire, at which the king was naturally surprised. But 
as to any special impression made on the mind and dispo- 
sition of Alexander by this contact with the sanctuary of 
Jehovah, history has nothing to relate. His pride was not 
thereby humbled, but perhaps only the more raised by it. 
Alexander, however, granted the Jews exemption from 
tribute every sabbatical year, (Lev. xxv,) and left their 
peculiar constitution inviolate. 

From Jerusalem he marched to Egypt, conquered the 
country, and founded a new maritime town, which he 
named Alexandria, and which grew at length to a very 
large and important city of commerce. For this end he 



THE MEDO-PEHSIAN EMPIRh:. 83 

peopled it with the inhabitants of ruined Tyre. After he 
had further made a strange journey to the temple of Jupi- 
ter Ammon, in the Libyan desert, he marched from Egypt, 
for the purpose of giving the final blow to the Persian em- 
pire, part of whose provinces he had already brought un- 
der his power. Near Gangamela (Arbela) a general en- 
gagement ensued. Although Darius had brought into the 
field a very large and well-armed host, yet victory again 
declared itself in favor of Alexander and his bold band of 
warriors : for if God has purposed to overthrow an em- 
pire, even the greatest hosts are of no avail. Darius him- 
self escaped with difficulty ; and Alexander, without fur- 
ther trouble, took the cities of Babylon, Susa, and Per- 
sepolis. Immense treasure was plundered in these several 
cities, and it required twenty thousand mules and five thou- 
sand camels to carry it off. The ruins of the noble palace 
of Persepolis are to be seen at this day. It was given to 
the flames, and its relics, still standing, after the lapse of 
twenty centuries, remain to teach the important verity, 
that a kingdom not at unity in itself, and that does not rest 
its pillars upon truth and the fear of God, must fall to 
pieces. Darius would fain have rallied once more, and 
have made a final effort for the recovery of his dominions ; 
but being surprised and pursued by the Macedonians, he 
ended his days by stabbing himself with a knife borrowed 
from one of his attendants, and herewith Avas the last spark 
of the great jMedo-Persian empire quenched for ever. 

In the prophecy of Daniel, this empire is represented 
by the symbol of a ravenous bear ; and again by the sym- 
bol of a strong ram. It is there further represented as 
the breast and arms of silver in Nebuchadnezzar's vision 
of the great image of the four successive empires. The 
interior matter and composition of its mass are not so firm 
and imposing as the empire of Nebuchadnezzar. The 
recognition of the true God is no longer so lively ; the 
■ working of such sacred leaven was checked by the rapid 



84 THE MEDO-PERSIAN EMPIRE. 

diffusion of the lire doctrine of the Parsees, a sect derived 
from Zoroaster. Tlie more remotely liistory descends from 
the first generations of mankind, the more do we find a 
want of primitive freshness, Uvely simplicity, strength, and 
solidity. " God made man upright ; but they have sought 
out many inventions." They have divided and subdi- 
vided their thoughts and faculties, to confound that which 
was intended to be simple ; and things having gone thus 
iar, to pervert pie human powers, men go still further in 
evil, as by a second nature, as it were by system and law. 
The sprightly brook, which purls like crystal all aUve, and 
presently bounds in dashing sheets from the rocky heights, 
and, forming a beautiful rainbow at various elevations in 
its clouds of spray, enters at length the broad level below, 
and, widening into a shallow over the fields, is now no 
longer clear, by reason of the muddy bed over which it 
slowly creeps ; but generates stagnant marshes on either 
side, which it would finally form into one large lake, were 
not a new channel dug to let it forth. Thus each succes- 
sive form of universal empire finds its supply of interior 
vital strength diminished ; so tha,t, in order to stand, it is 
forced to employ and waste its capital. Hence there is an 
increase of poverty, a diminution of currency in the pre- 
cious metal, the gold, and even the silver, so that copper 
and iron are all that remain. The more the royally 
atamped coin grows polished and smooth, the more does it 
discover, as being now only lackered, the inferior quality 
of its substance ; and this it does, first, as is always the 
case, in its more elevated spots. Human nature has to be 
made sensible of its own poverty and needy condition, and 
to learn that all attempts to construct happiness upon foun- 
dations merely human, or to heal with simples of earthly 
growth the mischief which has befallen it, must end in dis- 
appointment and disgrace. Tiie multitude, who have been 
used merely as tools by the mighty for attaining the ob- 
jects of their ambition, ought to sigh lor a Deliverer, and 



THE GRECIAN EMPIRE. 85 

to learn to inquire for a Prince, to whom all souls are pre- 
cious, and who graciously cares for all. The longing for 
the Messiah should be stirred up, not only among the peo- 
ple of God, but also among the people of the kingdoms of 
this world, and thereby a way and entrance be prepared 
for him. The more the successive empires of the earth 
have sought to confirm and enlarge their dominion at the 
expense of the welfare of their people, the more the vanity 
of the world has been proved ; and hence men should be 
more prepared for the reception of Him who is "the 
Father of the everlasting age," and "the Prince of 
peace." 

III.— THE GRECIAN EMPIRE. 

(a.) Alexander's Conquests and Death. 

Alexander was driven on more and more by his passion 
for conquest, and marched to India, where also nothing 
could resist his power. People and prince, wherever he 
advanced, either voluntarily submitted to him, or were 
vanquished by him, and Alexander had already resolved 
to push forward beyond the Ganges, when his own army 
renounced their former implicit compliance, declaring they 
would march no further. They saw that home was be- 
coming every day more and more out of their reach, and 
that all prospect of that period of rest, which, after so 
many and great exertions and hardships, they had se- 
riously longed for, was but increasingly deferred ; and as 
Alexander found them determined to abide by their decla- 
ration, he was obliged to yield to their wishes, and returned 
to Persia. Inexpressible toils and difficulties awaited 
their countermarch ; but Alexander shared them with his 
meanest soldiery, and thus kept up the spirits of his 
troops. 

After the half of his army had perished in this expedi- 
tion, the remainder at length got back to Persia, and then 



S6 THE GRECIAN EMPIRE!* 

all their fatigues and hardships were foi-gotten in the 
revels of eastern luxury. Even Alexander, who had 
heretofore been a pattern of moderation and self-govern- 
ment, now gave himself up with his soldiers to the most 
extravagant oriental indulgence ; he caused all salutations 
to be made to him with bowing of the knee, and aban- 
doned himself to debauchery and wine. He gave upon 
every occasion the preference to the Persians, to their 
customs, ways of living, and laws ; and hereby disgusted 
and alienated from him his Macedonian companions in 
arms. But, with all this, he did not forget his ambition 
of further conquests. He had already laid plans for the 
entire subjugation of Africa and India, for the discovery 
of a passage round Africa, and for uniting all nations un- 
der his sole dominion, with the intention of making Baby- 
lon the capital of his universal empire ; but his death in- 
tervened, and took him off from all his mighty projects, in 
the thirty-third year of his age, B. C. 323. Here, then, 
is another instance how God has ordained it for the good 
of mankind in general, that their years have, since the 
flood, become shortened, so that their vast plans of mis- 
chief cannot, for want of time, be carried into effect. 
Alexander was not suffered even to attain to the ordinary 
age of man, else he would doubtless have endeavored to 
realize his idea of uniting all nations under one dominion ; 
all those who have come after him in a similar career have 
had to begin again, and not possessing the great and vigor- 
ous spirit of Alexander, none of them ever arrived at 
their object ; notwithstanding the same endeavor to do it 
has been manifested by them all, as God had long before 
predicted at the building of Babel — Behold, men will not 
desist from anything which they have imagined to do. 
Gen. xi, 6. 



. THE GRECIAN EMPIRE. 87 

(b.) Alexauder\ Successors. 

Alexander left but two sons behind him, and these were 
infants, and were murdered shortly after his death. His 
principal captains then contended with one another, during 
twenty years, for the inheritance of his vast dominions, till 
at length, as had been foretold in Dan. viii, 22, his empire 
was divided into four parts, and the prospect of universal 
monarchy was thus set at a greater distance than ever. 
One of these parts formed the kingdom of Syria, which 
included the eastern portion of Alexander's possessions, as 
Persia, Babylonia, &c. ; another was the kingdom of 
Egypt, to which also belonged Phenicia, Judea, and a por- 
tion of Syria Proper ; the third was the kingdom of Lesser 
Asia ; and the fourth consisted of Macedonia and Thrace. 
The chiefs who obtained the lordship of these kingdoms 
were of Grecian families ; their immediate courtiers and 
attendants were Greeks ; their most flourishing capitals, 
Alexandria in Egypt, and Antioch in Syria, were Greek 
colonies. Thus was it that the Greek language, manners, 
customs, arts, and the spirit of Greece in general, became 
diiFused throughout the East, and mingled with oriental 
habits of thinking and acting; while the latter insensibly 
had increasino; influence in remodelin"r the character of 
the West. The principal aim of the East had been to 
establish dominion and prosperity by the power of the 
fleshly arm : the West, in its predominant Grecian charac- 
ter, aimed at both the one and the other, by the power of 
mind : whereas the Greek oriental dynasties desired to 
unite these opposite means together, which, however, could 
not be fully effected, till brought to pass by the imperial 
power that succeeded them. But in contemplating the 
four great empires one after another, we find it increasingly 
evident, that the interior substance of each was, after all, 
nothing more than '' flesh :" hence did each successively 
foster Vv'ithin itself more and more tlie germ of the apos- 



88 THE GRECIAN EMPIRE. 

tasy, the enmity of the human heart against God ; and, 
consequently, the elements of penal judgment. By this 
penal judgment have all the great empires hitherto natu- 
rally fallen ; and that which shall arise last will not 
escape it. 

Of the four kingdoms into which Alexander's conquered 
dominions were split, that of Thrace, to which belonged 
the largest part of Lesser Asia, first fell to ruin, partly 
through the co-operation of a people of Gaulish race, who, 
marching from the banks of the Danube through Thrace, 
poured into Lesser Asia, and founded in the north of that 
country a kingdom of their own, the kingdom of Galatia. 
Together with it, grew up in Lesser Asia the kingdoms of 
Pontus and Bithynia. The kingdom of Macedon had much 
trouble with its restless neighbors, especially with the 
Greeks. Had Greece sought her strength by intestine 
unity, it had been easy for her to bid defiance to the 
power of Macedon ; and, indeed, the establishment of 
the two popular confederacies of ^tolia and Achaia was 
for no other object ; but, owing to the narrow selfishness 
which in Greece had supplanted nearly all public spirit, 
the crafty policy of the Macedonian kings found it easy to 
circumvent the Greeks, to incense the two confederacies 
one against the other, and thereby to weaken them both. 
Even those two eminent worthies, Aratus and Philopoemen, 
were unable, with all their efforts, to preserve the inde- 
pendence of the declining people ; and, like all other great 
men, in times of gross degeneracy, they stand as conspicu- 
ous as the scale of high-water mark at low tide, only to 
show how far beneath them the whole mass of their 
countrymen had sunk away. At length Macedonia itself 
was subdued by the Romans, in the year 197 B. C. ; and, 
forty-nine years after this, it was reduced to a stated 
Roman province. Likewise, about the same period, was 
1 the fate of Greece decided. It was swallowed up in the 
I same great empire, which from this time stretched itself 



THE GRECIAN EMPIRE. 89 

over all countries ; and with the infamous demolition of ^ 
Corinth by the Romans, in the year 146 B. C, were buried \ 
the last relics of Greek political liberty and glory. But \ 
Greece still retained precedency in the kingdom of intellect, ^ 
and even her conquerors continued in this respect to pay 
her the most courtly deference. By her numerous colonies, 
by the power of the Grecian princes who then ruled the , 
world, and by the general diffusion and adoption of her ) 
language, she had secured to herself an unperishing re- \ 
membrance and a permanent influence. Greek taste | 
superseded that which was oriental, and even to this day [ 
is the eastern manner of thought and expression insipid 
to those who have been trained after the Grecian model. 

(c.) Syria and Egypt. 

But the special destinies of the Greek empire turn prin- 
cipally upon the relative condition of the two great king- 
doms of Syria and Egypt, which were at perpetual war 
with each other ; during which, Egypt, under its three first 
Greek kings of the house of the Ptolemies, had generally 
the ascendency. The mixture of the Grecian and oriental 
character evinced itself nowhere more conspicuously than 
in Egypt. By the demolition of Tyre and the building of 
Alexandria, Egypt became the general mart of commerce, 
and exported the productions of Europe, Asia, and Africa. 
But Alexandria was also the seat of Greek and eastern 
learning, and contained immense collections of books. 
Even the Jews, who in the various wars between Syria 
and Egypt were brought to the latter country, and ob- 
tained patronage and prosperity there, formed among them 
a distinct school of learned men, the school of the Alexan- 
drines, a medley of Scriptural head knowledge and of Greek 
philosophy. But under her succeeding kings, from the 
two hundred and twenty-first year before Christ, Egypt 
had to suffer by the preponderance of Syria ; and as early 
as 202 B. C. she fell under the protectorship of the 



90 THK GRECIAN EMPIRE. 

Romans, from which period she ceases to have her own 
independent history. 

To the Syrian kingdom, under the dynasty of the Se- 
leucid^e, belonged the heart of the Medo-Persian territory, 
conquered by Alexander. The countries of the Euphrates 
and Tigris as far as the Indus, to which were soon added 
the regions of hither Asia, formed a very considerable do- 
minion, which, however, needed to be held together by a 
strong imperial hand, to prevent their falling gradually 
asunder. But the liistory of its dynasty is a tissue of dis- 
grace and abominations ; and, among the princes of the 
world, none has so exclusively as King Antiochus Epiphanes 
the horrible pre-eminence of being set forth in Scripture 
as a type of antichrist. It was about the middle of the 
third century before Christ that Parthia and Bactria, two 
provinces of the Syrian realm, revolted and formed distinct 
kingdoms. Under Antiochus the Great, the affairs of 
Syria stood, for a time, in splendor ; but he began a war 
with the Romans, was defeated, and compelled to resign a 
portion of his kingdom to the Roman power, B. C. 190. 
His son, the before-mentioned Antiochus Epiphanes, who 
carried on the fifth war of Syria with Egypt, had purposed 
to make the Greek idolatry the dominant religion of his 
whole realm, and to impose it by force wherever it should 
not be voluntarily accepted. This fact, together with his 
having desecrated the temple of God at Jerusalem, is what 
principally constituted him a type of antichrist. He died 
a fearful death. His successors found their power and 
influence continually diminishing by insurrections at home 
and incursions abroad : and the melancholy history of their 
dominion ended in Syria becoming a Roman province, in 
the year 64 before the birth of Christ. Thus did the 
Romans completely inherit all the power and glory, which, 
since the time of Nebuchadnezzar, had been seated in the 
East during the Medo-Persian, as also during the Macedo- 
Grecian government. Here, then, is the precise point of 



THE GRECIAN EMPIRE. 91 

time from which we date the transfer of the world's imperial 
head-quarters from the East to Europe. 

(d.) The Age of the Maccabees. 

During the reigns of the first three kings of Egypt, as 
Alexander's successors in that country, Judea remained 
subject to their authority, and retained at the same time 
its own civil and ecclesiastical forms of government, which, 
in both respects, was conducted by its successive high 
priests. This state of things, also, continued unchanged 
even after the Jews had renounced the authority of Egypt, 
and had willingly subjected themselves to the Syrian king, 
Antiochus the Great, which they did in the one hundred 
and ninety-eighth year before Christ. The- Jews in Egypt 
having suffered oppression durmg the reign of Ptolemy IV., 
may have chiefly conduced to this their change of masters. 
Many Jews had also been previously drawn over to settle 
in Syria, and especially in Antioch. Their more intimate 
acquaintance with Grecian customs and opinions, which 
was thus introduced in two ways at once, was* not without 
its influence on the internal condition of the Jews. About 
this time was formed the sect of the Sadducees, who 
mingled the Greek philosophy with the word of God ; and 
who, though they admitted the books of Moses, yet in other 
respects became abandoned to a free-thinking infidelity, 
the prevalence of which may easily account for Antiochus 
Epiphanes daring so ignominiously to desecrate the Jewish 
sanctuary. An opposite party, indeed, was at the same 
time formed to confront them, namely, the sect of the Pha- 
risees ; who, strictly adhering to the letter of the law, rated 
also very highly the traditions of the church : but their 
zeal appears to have been, from the first, more carnal than 
spiritual ; whence they were not qualified to become a 
conservative vital force against the inroads made by infi- 
delity upon the heart of the nation. 

Antiochus Epiphanes, in the year 169 B. C, defiled 



92 THE GRECIAN EMPIRE. 

and pillaged the temple with armed military, caused the 
sacred books to be burned, and a multitude of Jews to be 
put to death who would not be seduced to apostatize from 
the law of their fathers. He determined to introduce 
Grecian idolatry and Grecian laws into the whole country ; 
and now, a second time, even as at the destruction of Je- 
rusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, only more threatening, was 
there danger lest the kingdom of God upon earth should be 
swallowed up by the powers of the world, and lest every 
point of connection between it and the promised Redeemer 
should be dissolved and lost. But then did God raise up 
the heroic race of the Maccabees ; who, by wisdom and 
valor, wrested again out of the hands of their enemies a 
kind of independence for the Jewish people ; to which 
John Hyrcanus, the son of Simon Maccabosus, chiefly con- 
tributed, by his alliance with the Roman. His son, Aris- 
tobulus, even assumed the title of king. But, after his 
death, there arose a civil war in Judea ; and the single 
parties of the government family were long at strife and 
conflict with one another, till the Roman general, Pompey, 
having undertaken the office of umpire, made himself mas- 
ter of Jerusalem, and appointed Hyrcanus to the high 
priesthood and princedom of Judea, on condition of his 
being tributary to the Romans. During the reign of this 
Hyrcanus, the Idumean Antipater gained more and more 
influence in that country; and, after many public dis- 
turbances and contentions, Antipater's son Herod was ap- 
pointed, by the Romans, king of Judea, in the thirty -ninth 
year before Christ; and hereby the dependence of the 
Jews upon the Roman empire became more manifest and 
decided. 

The condition of Judea had, during the last centuries 
previous to the Christian era, been subjected to very many 
vicissitudes. At some seasons she enjoyed a quiet and 
festal breathing time, namely, whenever the belligerent 
parties did not transfer the seat of war within her very 



THE GRECIAN EMPIRE. 93 

borders ; at others she was actually in a state of prosperity, 
as under the government of the high priest Simon, 1 Mace, 
xiv ; and, again, she had seasons of the deepest misery, 
and the most dreadful distraction and dismemberment, as 
in the reigns of Antiochus Epiphanes and of Alexander 
Jannseus. The condition of the Jewish people had now 
become very depressed and insignificant in comparison 
with their former flourisliing times, so that there remained 
nothing more than a shadow of their ancient glory. Also 
the cessation of prophecy, the last communication of which 
had been given by Malachi, as long ago as B. C. 400 ; 
and, again, their divisions among themselves into such ran- 
corous ecclesiastical parties; contributed to raise to the 
highest pitch the longing expectation of a promised Mes- 
siah, and to stir up and render very acute the feeling of 
their need of redemption. And if, among the people of 
God themselves, who possessed the light of revelation, 
there were, at the Saviour's actual appearing, but few 
found to manifest lively, sincere, and spiritual longing for 
his advent, this could be no other than an additional proof 
how deep was the depravation of mankind in general, and, 
consequently, how needful was the coming of a Redeemer. 
External means, as history had all along taught, could not 
effect the restoration of fallen human nature. All experi- 
ments of the kind had failed : the highest culture of the 
body and intellect in the East and West, the most power- 
ful empires, the wisest inventions of human policy, the 
most splendid temporal prosperity, the most severe chas- 
tisements, all had transpired, and only served to manifest 
the corruption of the human heart in every respect. Even 
the law of God which had been revealed from heaven, and 
his perpetual and immediate intercourse with his chosen 
nation by their priests and prophets, could not directly 
help that people to true happiness, and had only the effect 
of preventing them from sinking with so deep a plunge as 
the rest of the nations, and of preserving among them a 



94 THE GRECIAN EMPIRE. 

sanctuary of believing hearts, with whom the Messiah, at 
his coming in the flesh, might connect his new work of 
mercy. If, then, the very people of God themselves, who 
had his appointed constitution, his law, and his wisdom 
from heaven, thus dwindled away, w^hat could be expected 
of the Grecian imperial government, whose wisdom was 
of this world, and contained so little of divine and funda- 
mental truth ? The Grecian empire w^as to come to nothing, 
and to confess, by its fall, that it had not within itself 
enough stamina of truth and of divine life to overcome the 
powers of dissolution and death, and to make good its pro- 
mises of happiness to the nations. 

(e.) Condition of the East and West. 

The fundamental idea of Greece was liberty: that of 
the East, was imity hy implicit obedience. The history of 
the eastern empire is a history of attempts to plant and 
support unity by implicit obedience. The history of 
Greece exhibits a series of attempts to secure a freedom 
for every department of intellect and common life. The 
history of the fourth universal empire, namely, the Roman, 
is pervaded by a continual struggle between liberty and 
implicit obedience. lATbereas, as, in the East, every en- 
deavor was directed to reduce the importance of individu- 
als to a mere component fraction of the great total, by 
uniting very large masses, as much as possible, under one 
general absolute will, — the ruling aim in Greece was to 
adjudge to every individual a share in the government ; 
so that, indeed, every subject, and at the same time every 
ruler, was severally serviceable to the w^hole, though he 
still remained his own master. The Greeks would neither 
be governed nor govern by sensible physical strength, but 
by the power of mind ; and this dominion continued with 
them when all other power w^as taken aw^ay. But as they 
extended their dominion, foreign mixture could not be 
avoided ; and this in turn had its influence upon them- 



THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 05 

selves, tlieir constitution, and their religion. Had the 
Grecian ideas, which were diffused over nearly the whole 
civilized world, especially by the victories of Alexander, 
possessed inherent life, the nations would have been made 
happy by them, and their empire would have been ren- 
dered immovable. But thus was it to be made evident, 
that even by the most refined and exalted education of the 
human mind, to which it cannot be denied the Greeks at- 
tained, no power is awakened in man sufficient to restrain 
the corruption of human nature. Wliether the spirit of 
inquiry and experiment, which' was stirred by the diffu- 
sion of Grecian ideas among the nations, served more to 
further or to hinder the reception of Christian truth, it is 
not easy to determine ; for often was it the very character 
of this Grecian philosophy to hate and despise the truth, 
as we learn from Acts vi, 9, etc.; xvii, 18, etc.; and St. 
Paul himself declares, in 1 Cor. i, and in other places, 
what sort of position the word of God had to take against 
Grecian wisdom. 

TY.— THE ROMAN EMPIRE. X 

(n.) Rome's Earliest History. 

Italy was, probably, at the earliest dispersion of man- 
kind, peopled by the family of Ashkenaz ; but every fresh 
eastern movement, which occasioned individual nations or 
national families to seek out new settlements in the West, 
brought a fresh mass of settlers into these western coun- 
tries ; and the genealogy of Italy's earliest periods con- 
tains such a multitude of various names, that it can no 
longer be decided which settlers came early or late, or 
which settled in Upper and which in Lower Italy. Among 
them we may mention the Etruscans, (or Etrurians,) who 
appear to have had their period of cultivation in very early 
times, and long before the existence of the Romans. Be- 
sides these, the central part of Italy wa" inhabited by the 



96 THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 

Latins, the Campanians, the Umbrians, the Samnites, and 
other petty nations. In Latium, the territory of the La- 
tins, was buih, about the year 753 B. C, that city in 
which the empire of the world was for the longest period 
to have its seat, and which, next to Jerusalem, and yet in 
a way of contrariety and opposition to it, is to be regarded 
as the most important city in the world. Rome was at 
first a small and inconsiderable town, with four thousand 
inhabitants and a territory of eight square miles ; whereas, 
at its most renowned period, its dominion extended into 
the three quarters of the world, over five hundred and 
twenty thousand square miles, and over more than one 
hundred millions of men. Whether its founder Romulus 
was a captain of robbers, or a king's son, is not clearly 
ascertained ; for on his history, as also on that of his six 
immediate successors, there still abides some fabulous ob- 
scurity, from which, however, thus much emerges as cer- 
tain, that a struggle for aggrandizement, a rude, bold spirit 
of enterprise, and an immovable firmness, all along, from 
the very first, distinguished this infant state. The found- 
ing of the Roman state is coincident with the period 
when, in Assyria, great commotions were stirred by a new 
dynasty ; and when, as one consequence of them, an end 
was put to the kingdom of the ten tribes of Israel. Some 
outlines of its first constitution, which indeed remained 
durable long afterward, discover themselves at this early 
period ; as the establishment of its senate, the distribution 
of its inhabitants into patricians and plebeians, the intro- 
duction of a polytheism borrowed in great measure from 
Greece ; and especially wars, continually waged for con- 
quest abroad, and perpetual broils of popular contention 
against the arrogant claims of rulers at home. In time of 
war, every Roman was a soldier, and martial superiority 
to their foes was with them the highest and noblest attain- 
ment ; whence one and the same word in their language 
signifies both virtue and courage. During intervals of 



The ROMAN EMPIRE. 97 

peace they practiced agriculture; and this, in their best 
times, was a favorite employment even with their chief 
men ; whence the people, in general, preserved that hardi- 
ness of constitution which was required for holding them- 
selves in readiness, at any time, to engage in warlike ex- 
peditions. Their laws were rude and severe. The father 
of every family was uncontrolled lord over his children ; 
and the instances in which a father, in the capacity of pub- 
lic judge, has been known to condemn his criminal son to 
death, are far from being the most revolting of the narra- 
tives in Roman history. All considerations were com- 
pelled to yield to those of the commonwealth ; all private 
interests were sacrificed to those which were considered as 
belonging to the public at large. 

The heroic deeds which the earliest history of Rome 
exhibits, give us to understand what an idea the Romans 
had of greatness and personal excellence, and how the ex- 
ercise and strengthening of courage, and the spirit of daring 
and enduring enterprise, served to form them into a people 
so invincible. But, willing and ready as they were to make 
every sacrifice to the welfare of the state, the lustre of 
which, on the other hand, favored the ambition of the in- 
dividual, they were no less averse to connive at anything 
in their king of self-aggrandizement, or to endure any 
arrogant pretensions from him. This, therefore, soon 
gave occasion to a change in their form of government, 
and their monarchy was converted into a republic, in 
which the governing persons had the command only for a 
certain term, and were chosen by the people. The most 
ancient and simple form of government is the monarchical. 
It took its rise from the patriarchal government of families, 
in which the father of the house was absolute over his 
household. A man like Abraham was only the father of 
a family, and yet a petty prince, who could cope with the 
great Chedorlaomer, and pursue him even unto the neigh- 
borhood of Damascus. Just in this wav it mav have come 
5 



98 THir ROMAN EMPIRE. 

to pass, that several of them joined themselves to a bold 
leader, who proved his courage and strength in fight with 
the wild beasts that had become too prevalent in a thinly 
peopled region, and hence they would naturally appoint him 
their lord protector ; which appears the meaning of what 
the Scriptures relate concerning Nirarod. Thus, when 
such a mighty hunter began to exercise his prowess upon 
his own species, he would become a conqueror ; and of this 
we have likewise the first example in the case of Nimrod, 
the founder of Babel. Moreover, the monarchical form 
of government remained prevalent afterward in the East, 
as the simplest and most tried ; it was also more prevalent 
than any other in the West : and the history of the Greeks 
and Romans, who made experiment of every possible form 
of government, has shown that the political constitution 
of nations, as it has set out with the monarchical form, 
so has it always sooner or later returned to that form 
again. Highly advanced intellectual cultivation, and ele- 
vated pride, and the prevalence of selfish principles, have 
stirred both in the Greeks and Romans a struggle for free- 
dom from all vassalage ; while private men among them 
had been ever promj^ted, by a feeling of their own strength 
and importance, to aspire to at least a share in the govern- 
ment. Even Sparta is no special exception to this remark, 
though its popular government bore a different constitu- 
tional stamp from that of Athens ; for its lawgiver, Lycur- 
gus, when exhorted by another to introduce the popular 
government, had prudently replied, " Make the experiment 
first in your own family." But the Spartans, who were 
governed first by kings, then by epliori, and lastly by the 
council of the arclions, had freely yielded to this subjection ; 
because they believed that by no other means could the 
state be strong and united ; and the self-denial to which it 
obliged every private individual, was plentifully rewarded 
by the nurture which it gave to that selfish principle by 
which, under the name of patriotism, they were all actu- 



THE ROMAN EMPIRE. ^9 

ated as one man. Was the state aggrandized, powerful, 
and flourishing, or held it the first rank in Greece, every 
citizen shared in all this; each of them had, by his 
very self-denial, contributed to produce it. The posperity 
of the state was considered the prosperity of every private 
citizen. To see it free from foreign influence, to see it 
raised above its neighbors, he regarded as so much free- 
dom and advancement of his own. The sentiment of each 
private Lacedemonian was the same as that which was 
expressed by Lewis XIV., of France, respecting himself, 
" I am the government." But when a nation lias develop- 
ed all the glory of human wisdom, polity, and bravery; 
when it has attained and enjoyed all the prosperity that 
can be attained by these means — then comes a time when 
this artificial stretch begins to relax ; the nature that had 
been restrained tears oft' its mask, and then order changes 
to unbridled licentiousness, public spirit to the basest kind 
of selfishness, wise eloquence to the most insipid babbling, 
and firmness of interior strength to a mere vain boast. 
Thus are all the means for popular institutions exhausted ; 
there is no longer any counterpoise, the government sinks 
with the plebeian interest, because both are one and the 
same thing, and the people fall either under the power of 
a foreign conqueror, as did the Greeks, or into the hands 
of a despot rising from the midst of them, as did the Romans. 
The republics of antiquity have had this experience long 
ago ; and the same, at present, threatens those in America. 
Even the history of the republican constitution in Switzer- 
land is no exception to this remark. The Swiss were pros- 
perous in it, as long as they retained their ancient honesty 
and piety, faithfulness and simplicity; and true religion 
renders even the worst constitution tolerable : but modern 
events have taught us, how little protection this form of con- 
stitution, of itself, has afforded against the predominance 
of daring infidelity, unbridled arbitrariness, and crying 
injustice. 



100 THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 

(b.) Rome under the Consuls. 

About the time when the Jews were building the second 
temple at Jerusalem, and while preparations were making 
for the wars of the Persians with the Greeks, was Tarquin 
the Proud, the last king of Rome, driven from his throne 
and country ; and in his stead were two consuls appointed, 
whose government was to last but a single year, and then 
were t^vo new ones to be chosen ; they were selected from 
among the patricians, but elected by the people. One of 
the first two was Brutus, who had been the principal means 
of expelling the royal family. His sons became implicated 
in a secret conspiracy which had been formed for the pur- 
pose of restoring the ejected king. Brutus had already 
provided against this by a law which had rendered it a 
capital offense for any one to attempt it. The plot was dis- 
covered, and Brutus caused his two sons to be beheaded in 
his presence. Such strict justice and unrelenting severity 
were, in the eyes of the Romans, of great value. Tarquin 
prevailed with King Porsenna, of Clusium, to come with an 
army to his assistance ; and Porsenna pushed his march 
to the very walls of Rome : only the wooden bridge over 
the Tiber was now between him and the city. After the 
guards of the bridge had fled, Horatius Codes, with no 
more than two attendants, made a stand against the whole 
body of the enemy, pressing into its narrow pass, for a suffi- 
cient time to allow the portion of the bridge behind him to 
be cut away. His two comrades escaped upon the last 
plank, and he plunged into the river, and svram across, 
under a shower of missiles, into the city. Another young 
Roman, Mutius Scoevola, soon afterward found his way 
into the royal tent of the enemy, for the purpose of assassi- 
nating King Porsenna ; but, as he did not know him, he 
stabbed his secretary, whom he mistook for the king. He 
was seized immediately, and declared, without the least 
dismay, that he had intended to kill the king, and that he 



THE ROMAN EMPIiUi. 101 

had no fear of death : moreover, that many others meant 
to follow his example, and would renew the attempt. The 
king threatened him with burning alive, unless he should 
make further discoveries ; whereupon Mutius composedly 
held his hand over a pan of burning coals that stood by, 
till he had totally disabled it ; to show that such threaten- 
ing could not terrify him. The king, astonished at such 
firmness, made peace with the Romans, and retired from 
the city. Such instances serve to evince the " iron " 
character of the Romans, which was suited to crush and 
break everything in pieces; as the iron legs, in the 
symbolical dream of Nebuchadnezzar, were designed to 
signify. 

While Rome, whose territory hitherto remained small, 
had perpetually to contend with her troublesome neighbors, 
or, like a restless neighbor herself, was ever attacking 
some petty state in her vicinity, her own component par- 
ties at home were also in perpetual ferment, and contended 
with one another about their respective dignities and in- 
fluence in the commonwealth. The plebeians were hin- 
dered, by incessant wars, from the cultivation of their 
lands, and yet had no other means of subsistence ; conse- 
quently they became loaded with debt, and dependent on 
the rich patricians, and this dependence often degenerated 
into the suflfering of harsh treatment. This led to resist- 
ance, and refusal to serve in war, and, finally, to entire 
division and separation. The people withdrew to a hill 
nine miles from Rome, and left the patricians to shift for 
themselves, who could not do without them for manual 
labor, and for protection against the foreign aggressor. 
After tedious negotiations, the people were at length pre- 
vailed upon to return to the city, and were allowed to 
choose out of their own body two ofiicers, called tribunes 
of the people, who were privileged to attend all the ses- 
sions of the senate, to hear all their resolutions, and to have 
a veto upon any proposed measure which to them should 



10^ THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 

eeem adverse to the interests of their constituents. This 
appointment rendered the business of government more 
confined, intricate, and artificial, and restored indeed a sort 
of equipoise between the patricians and plebeians, but con- 
tained materials for never-ending broils and discords : for 
it was founded on mutual distrust ; and though it served 
as a bond to hold both parties together, yet it could neither 
cover nor conceal the rent that had been made between 
them. As early as in the middle of the fifth century be- 
fore the Christian era was it however conceded that 
patricians and plebeians might intermarry ; and in the 
course of the next century, the plebeians, after a long 
struggle, obtained as a right that persons gradually pro- 
moted from their own rank should become as admissible 
to all the high offices of state as were the patricians by 
birth. We shall here give but one instance of these con- 
tentions. Immediately after the appointment of tribunes, 
a famine ensued ; and, as all the chastisements of God only 
serve the more to discover the perverseness of any people 
who regard him not, this famine proved an occasion of 
rancorous strife between the people and the aristocracy, 
who imputed the cause of it to each other, because they 
were alike guiltily ignorant of their common Lord, and of 
sin as the common cause of their calamity. The senate 
obtained corn from Sicily, and deliberated whether it 
should be sold for its value in money, or given gratis. The 
stern and haughty Coriolanus, a veteran warrior, who had 
done considerable services to his country, insisted that it 
should be sold ; being determined to avail himself of this 
opportunity of humbling the plebeians, and to wrest from 
them the rights they had so recently obtained. The peo- 
ple, in resentment, expelled him from the city, and he fled 
to the neighboring Volscians, who intrusted him with the 
command of an army, to chastise the Romans. With this 
force he presently posted himself in a menacing position 
under the walls of Rome, and all endeavors of the alarmed 



THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 103 

inhabitants to soften him were fruitless. At length, his 
mother and wife succeeded in persuading him to withdraw. 
He marched back the army of the Volscians, but had to 
atone for his clemency with his life, B. C. 488. 

A great humiliation befell the proud and hitherto suc- 
cessful Romans, about the year 385 B. C, when a bold 
host from Gaul, under the conduct of Brennus, invaded 
their northern territory : a prelude of those awful visita- 
tions which, after a lapse of centuries, arrived from the 
same quarter, and put an end to the glory of Rome. The 
Roman army was totally defeated ; the inhabitants of the 
city fled ; Rome was taken and burnt. A treaty was en- 
tered into with the Gauls, and a large sum of money was 
offered to persuade them to march away ; but just at the 
critical moment, Camillus, a banished Roman general, 
made his appearance with an armed force ; he chased the 
Gauls out of the country, and Rome was rebuilt. 

Rome had at that time several such heroic men as 
Camillus, who, from love to his country, forgot the injustice 
done to himself History relates, that a wide gap had 
suddenly opened in the forum, by the ground falling in ; 
and the soothsayers insisted that it never would close up 
again until Rome should throw into it what she esteemed 
most valuable to her. Whereupon Marcus Curtius, a bold 
Roman youth, came forward armed, and mounted on his 
horse; and having declared that Rome's most precious 
things were her arms and valor, he spurred his horse, and 
threw himself into the gulf, which immediately (says the 
story) closed over him. Whether the whole of the story 
be true or not, we see from it what it was that the Romans 
were most proud of and most confided in. 

In other respects, their manner of life at that period was 
generally plain, and luxury had not yet supplanted the 
ancient rude simplicity. Commerce, the usual source of 
luxury, had not yet with them become maritime. Agri- 
culture was still their most important business in times of 



104 THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 

peace ; and Cincinnatus had to be fetched from his plough 
upon being chosen to the dictatorship, an office of absolute 
sovereignty, which existed only during occasions of great 
national difficulty : and Curius Dentatus, who was three 
times consul, was, when visited by the ambassadors of the 
hostile Samnites with the vain purpose of bribing him, 
found by them in his cottage, boiling vegetables in an 
earthen pot, and was fetched by his countrymen from such 
an humble dwelling to command their armies. Li Sparta, 
Lycurgus had forbidden the use of gold and silver coin, 
and allowed only that of iron, with a view to prevent lux- 
ury ; and it was four hundred years after this before money 
began to be coined at Rome, and to be called pecunia, 
(from pecus, cattle,) either because cattle had been hitherto 
the most common medium of barter and exchange, or be- 
cause some figure of the kind was stamped upon the coin. 
At Athens, in the time of Solon, B. C. 590, the price of 
an ox was five drachmas, (about one dollar,) and that of a 
sheep was half as much. About two hundred years after 
this, the standard price of a modiiis (a half bushel, or two 
pecks) of wheat was one as, (about the third of an English 
penny, a little less than one cent.) But this is not so 
much a proof of the real cheapness of commodities, as of 
the scarcity or high value of money. Even Roman ladies 
used personally to bake bread for their families. Wine 
was at that time a very rare thing ; and a reputable citizen 
has been known to put his own wife to death, because she 
had privately indulged in excessive drinking. The religion 
of the Romans, if their superstition may be so called, was 
carried to a great extent. No enterprise was adventured 
on without consulting the gods, whose favorable assent was 
inquired for, by contemplating the flight of birds, by con- 
sulting the entrails of sacred victims, and the like. It was 
by means of such superstitions that the priests acquired 
that important influence which they exercised in all public 
affairs, Such a religion could not, of course, any more 



THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 105 

than the other superstitions of the heathen world, teach a 
word concerning love to God, or concerning the love of 
God to men. The gods of the heathen were objects of 
dread, whom they sought to propitiate and conciliate ; this 
shows, however, that at least a belief everywhere prevailed 
respecting an influence from the Invisible upon the lives 
and affairs of mankind. 

Rome had always hitherto very jealous and formidable 
neighbors, and her territory was not yet much enlarged ; 
neither was it till about 338 B. C. that she had made her- 
self entire mistress of Latium. About this period, and still 
later, her wars with the Samnites were attended with great 
danger, and often embarrassed and humbled her. But 
Rome was constitutionally of a persevering and indomitable 
spirit ; she had such an iron constancy, that no loss or 
damage could compel her to yield to her enemies, or to 
accept peace from them upon any dishonorable terms : but 
she always acted in these respects like a desperate game- 
ster, impassioned to the utmost risk, whose notion is, " If I 
now give up play, what I have lost is lost for ever ; but if I 
go on, I may win it back again, and with immense advan- 
tage ;" and so he risks his all upon one more adventure. 
Many a one has, by such policy, been ruined irrecoverably ; 
but to Rome it was always successful, because God had 
destined her to be the mistress of the world. Yet how 
good is it, that men do not know the prosperity that awaits 
them ! Had the Romans foreseen the power and splendor 
at which they were destined to arrive, their pride would 
have been intolerable to the rest of mankind; it was 
enough that their spirits were not to be broken by mis- 
fortune. 

By their subjugation of the Samnites, which was at 
Rome's heroic period, a way was opened to the conquest 
of all Italy. If a formidable power here and there op- 
posed them, yet it stood alone, and so was easily crushed 
by Rome's continually augmenting strength. Even a 
5* 



106 THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 

foreign foe, in the person of Pyrrhns, king of Epirus, 
could effect nothing against them. It is true, that in con- 
flict with them he gained several battles, by means of his 
elephants and Grecian mode of warfare ; but by these his 
forces became continually more and more reduced, so that 
he was at last totally defeated, and fled home in precipita- 
tion. Still more arduous and important in their conse- 
quences were their wars with Carthage ; for herein they 
had to exert themselves to their utmost to avert destruc- 
tion : and, as a rebuke to the injustice and cruelty with 
which they treated the vanquished, they caught from 
them the infection of that insidious poison, Avhich slowly 
but surely wasted their vital strength and prepared their 
downfall, namely, luxury and looseness of morals, together 
with a blind confidence in what they thought their un- 
changeable good fortune. This confidence flattered them 
to regard themselves as the lords of the world, and so to 
push and continue their conquests until the empire had 
grown to such an unnatural bulk that it sunk by its OAvn 
weight. Meanwhile, their luxury and lax morals gradually 
robbed them of their constitutional vigor, and so weakened 
their national spirit, that at last it could no longer bear up 
and manage its own gigantic body, but gave birth to such 
an enormous mass of depravity and crying abominations. 
as necessarily brought down upon it the judgment of dis- 
solution. 

(c.) The runic Wars. 

Mercantile states, such as Tyre, whicli have possessed 
but a limited home territory, and whose population has 
become rapidly multiplied by reason of their great pros- 
perity, have sometimes been obliged to cause a portion of 
their inhabitants to emigrate to regions beyond and more 
thinly peopled ; or they have found it politic to get settle- 
ments established for their emigrant countrymen at places 
with Avhich they have been most connected in traffic, or 



THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 107 

where they have wished to establish marts for their articles 
of merchandise. From the one or the other of these mea- 
sures, when not from both together, originated the colonies 
of former ages. Thus arose Tartessus (Tarshish) in 
Spain ; thus, also, Carthage, (New Town,) on the coast 
of Africa, in the country of modern Tunis, both of which 
were Tyrian colonies. The latter appears to have been 
founded about the beginning of the ninth century before 
the Christian era. Carthage had inherited commerce from 
the mother state ; but bore, like the effigy of justice, the 
sword as well as the scales, and subdued to her dominion 
the whole surrounding country, together with Sardinia, 
Corsica, and a portion of Sicily. She had, moreover, her 
own colonies, which were as granddaughters of Tyre, in 
Spain and Portugal, and on the western coast of Africa. 
At the period when Rome came into conflict with her, the 
traffic of the world was no longer at the command of a 
single power, as it had been in the flourishing times of the 
Sidonians and Tyrians. Tyre was indeed fallen, but 
Alexandria had risen in its stead to gi-eat wealth and in- 
fluence ; Miletus, and other cities of Asia Minor, as also 
the Greek and Sicilian cities, prosecuted a vigorous com- 
merce in all directions. Carthage found her men of busi- 
ness continually multiplying, and that it was of the last 
importance for her to multiply, as far as possible, her fac- 
tories, commercial resorts, and stations abroad : she, there- 
fore, beheld with a very jealous and invidious eye the 
growing power of Rome ; especially as the latter had now 
made herself complete mistress of all the south of Italy. 
When ready combustibles are brought together, a small 
spark can kindle a conflagration ; and this was the case at 
present. An insignificant dispute respecting the city of 
Messina, in Sicily, gave the signal for those wars of Rome 
with Carthage which continued for above a century, and 
for the commencement of which the two powers were very 
unequally fitted ; for the Romans were soldiers by profes- 



108 THE ROMAN EMPIRE, 

sion, whereas the Carthaginians were merchants. Rome had 
a veteran standing army, already so inured to conquest, 
that for the present it had no immediate employment ; and 
Carthage possessed an excellent naval force, against which 
the Romans could as yet bring only a fleet of pitiful barges. 
But Rome was not to be dispirited on this account : what 
she had undertaken she felt it necessary to accomplish ; 
and what was not possessed might be obtained. A Car- 
thaginian vessel having been stranded on then- coast, the 
Romans took this for their model, and by it they soon con- 
structed a fleet of one hundred and twenty ships of war, 
with which, upon their first naval encounter with the Car- 
thaginians, their military experience, which was now put 
to a new sort of trial, strikingly displayed itself, and they 
gained a complete victory. The marble columns which 
they erected, as a memorial of their first grand and suc- 
cessful naval battle, are still standing at Rome: it took 
place in the year B. C. 2 GO, and from that time the Ro- 
mans went to work on the offensive, and deputed an army 
against Carthage itself. This army, however, was beaten, 
and Regulus, its commander, taken prisoner. Some years 
afterward, when the Romans had recovered the ascend- 
ency, the Carthaginians sent ReguUis to Rome, with a com- 
mission to treat for peace. He, however, upon his arrival, 
instead of executing any such commission, boldly advised 
his fellow-citizens to prosecute the war with all vigor, be- 
cause he well knew the present weakened condition of 
Carthage ; and though he equally knew that a horrible and 
lingering death awaited him upon his return, the most 
pressing entreaties of his countrymen and friends could 
not prevail with him to break his promise of returning to 
Carthage. Here was firmness, which was well worthy of 
a better cause. Subsequently the fortune of war was 
turned for awhile. The Carthaginians, however, found 
themselves at length obliged, by their great losses, to con- 



THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 109 

elude a peace, under very severe and humiliating condi- 
tions, in the year B. C. 241. 

The second Punic War, occasioned by the treachery 
and insolence of Rome, commenced B. C. 218, amid cir- 
cumstances very diiFerent from those of the first. The 
Carthaginians had now Hannibal for their general, who 
gave the Romans a great deal of trouble, and who was an 
instance how much depends on the enterprise and expe- 
rience of a single leader. When this remarkable person 
was scarcely nine years of age, his father, Hamilcar, had 
made him swear everlasting hatred to the Romans ; and 
had all Christians kept their vows of devotedness to God 
as faithfully as Hannibal kept his of hatred to the Ro- 
mans, what a blessing they would have been to the world ! 
At the time that the Romans were declaring Avar at Car- 
thage, Hannibal, with his well-appointed armament, was 
stationed in Spain, and now pushed his marches across the 
High Pyrenees, and the steep snow-covered Alps, among 
innumerable difficulties and dangers, into Upper Italy, in 
order to attack Rome from the north. He lost more than 
thirty thousand men in this arduous expedition, and his 
army amounted to only twenty-six thousand Avhen he en- 
countered the Romans, for the first time, on the banks of 
the Po. The latter, however, were completely beaten. 
A second Roman force was annihilated by him on the 
banks of the Trebia, and the consequence of this victory 
was, that he became master of all Upper Italy. A third 
Roman army was defeated by him near the lake Thra- 
symenus, and now the consternation at Rome became 
general. Since the days of Brennus, were the Romans 
never in such imminent peril, and for a long time had they 
been unaccustomed to humiliation of this sort. But de- 
spondency did not enter their mind. When they saw that 
they could do nothing with Hannibal by force, they had 
recourse to stratagem ; for Hannibal, fearing to provoke 



110 THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 

them to the bravery of despair, had thought proper 
not to attack Rome at once, sword in hand, but left it 
to the right on his march into the south of Italy. A Ro- 
man army, under the command of Fabius, a skillful and 
prudent general, followed him: but much as Hannibal 
continually wished to bring him to a general engagement, 
Fabius declined it; and hence he got the surname of 
Cunctator^ or the Delayer. He, however, thus effected 
the deUverance of his countrymen ; and though they after- 
ward suffered another dreadful defeat in Lower Italy, yet 
Hannibal could make no advantage of his victories, be- 
cause he received no reinforcements from Carthage. His 
army had become very greatly weakened and diminished 
by its many battles ; and the mercantile and covetous Car- 
thaginians at home got tired of the enormous sacrifices 
they had to make for the support of the state. Mean- 
while, the Romans had recruited their strength ; they con- 
quered Sicily, and transported another armament against 
Carthage. Hereupon Hannibal was recalled with all 
speed, and attempted a treaty of peace with Scipio, the 
Roman general ; but the conditions demanded by the Ro- 
mans were too severe : and the battle of Zama, in which 
Scipio totally defeated Hannibal, decided the fate of the 
Carthaginians, who were now obliged to submit to any 
terms. Thus ended the second Punic War, B. C. 196, and 
Rome stood with renewed strength, enlarged territory, and 
greater pride than ever. 

Hannibal, however, had not forgotten his oath. He 
fled to the Syrian king, Antiochus the Great, and incited 
him to war against the Romans. But to what avail? 
Antiochus himself was defeated by them, and only increased 
the power of Rome, by being compelled to cede a portion 
of his dominions. Hannibal, whom tlie Romans greatly 
desired to make their prisoner, fled a second time, and 
at length, in Bithynia, put an end to his own life by 
poison, the same year that his victorious antagonist Scipio 



THE ROMAN EMPIRE. Ill 

died, on his own rural estate, whither he had been banished 
by the ingratitude of his country. 

Carthage was now recruited, and had recovered its 
mercantile importance ; this the Romans could not behold 
without jealousy and alarm. Hence a third Punic War 
was commenced, by unprovoked hostilities on the part of 
the Romans, B. C. 149. The Carthaginians desperately 
defended themselves for two years ; but, in B. C. 1 4G, 
Carthage was taken by Scipio the Younger, and of her 
seven hundred thousand inhabitants, fifty thousand only 
escaped with their lives. The city was burning for seven- 
teen days, a fearful spectacle, the awfulness of which seemed, 
to the people of those times, not a little augmented by the 
appearance, just then, of a great comet with pallid radiance. 
Hereupon, Scipio, while beholding the conflagration, is said 
to have expressed a dread presentiment, Avhich was ful- 
filled long afterward, that a time would come when Rome 
would be subjected to a similar fate. In that same year, 
the city of Corinth, with its noble treasuries of the fine 
arts, was demolished and burned by the Romans, and 
could never afterward raise itself to its former lustre. 
Macedonia had two years previously fallen under the 
Roman yoke. 

Thus do the judgments of the Almighty come upon 
great cities and states, w^hen the measure of their sins is 
full, and the time of the divine long-suftering and forbear- 
ance is at an end. Tlie abominations of the Phenician 
idolatiy, the same which had wrought so much desolation 
in Judea, and against Avhich the prophets of the Lord had 
so loudly testified, had been brought with them, by the 
Carthaginian colonists, from their mother country. The 
wanton luxury, which finds its head-quarters in great com- 
mercial states, had produced all manner of sins and vices, 
the torrent of which no political enactments are sufficient 
to stem. This, together with the enormous population of 
the great citv, introduced, as is the case with all great 



112 THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 

cities, a very extensive depravation of morals, which at 
length knew no bounds. Thus Carthage became ripe for 
judgment, and underwent the fate of all the great states of 
antiquity, and perished in her sins. 

(d.) Gradual Introduction of the Imperial Monarchy. 

Rome had, by her complete conquest, gained an im- 
portant addition to her territory and strength ; but the vast 
wealth, which from this period she began to accumulate 
within her capital, eventually proved her destruction. 
Thus was she like a certain beautiful fruit, which, when 
ripe, is punctured by a poisonous insect, and looks even 
more beautiful in consequence of it, while its whole pulp 
is gradually changing to dust. The generals of the Ro- 
man armies, the governors of their conquered provinces, 
brought home with them much money and many slaves, 
bought up fields and houses, and converted them into 
villas, and thus dispossessed the poorer classes of labor and 
bread. But then these poorer classes were Roman citi- 
zens, who had a vote upon the filling up of any public 
office, and who, consequently, gave their vote to such as 
paid them best for it ; thus bribery rapidly found its way 
to the seat of emjiire, and hence it came to pass, that not 
always the most worthy, but often the richest and most 
liberal in giving, were chosen to the offices of government. 
These, as soon as they became secure of power, sought to 
indemnify themselves for their vast largesses, by various 
acts of oppression, exaction, and injustice. The riches of 
Carthage, the luxury and licentiousness of the Asiatics, the 
arts and refinements of Greece, and the rude coarseness of 
Rome, had now come together ; and together caused the 
depravation of the people, and the prostration of their 
strength. Their simplicity of manners had now to give 
place to pomp and luxury, learned from foreign nations ; 
and their ancient integrity and cordiality were changed to 



THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 113 

arrogant pretensions, ambition, and haughtiness of man- 
ners. Their conquests, indeed, still continued ; and their 
warlike spirit was not yet diminished; they subjugated 
Numidia ; a large army of the Cimbri and Teutones, who 
had advanced from the north of Germany, was defeated 
by Marius, B. C. 101 ; Spain submitted to the Roman 
yoke; the Eonian general, Pompey, vanquished Mithri- 
dates, kmg of Pontus, added Syria to the Roman provinces, 
and thereby secured to the Romans the supremacy in Judea. 
But, as abroad, so also in Rome itself, there prevailed a con- 
flict of parties — that of the commons against the patricians ; 
and that of the rich and influential, among themselves, for 
power and precedency. The civil constitution of Rome 
was now declining more and more, from that of a free 
republic to a despotic monarchy, in proportion as the 
Romans began to set a value upon other things than the 
glory of arms, public liberty, and the honor and prosperity 
of then* country. Already had Marius and Sylla, about 
B. C. 86, waged bloody war with each other for prece- 
dency in the state ; and Sylla had forcibly gained to him- 
self the office of absolute dictatorship for an unlimited time. 
Twenty-five years afterward, three men confederated toge- 
ther, and divided among themselves the government of the 
empire, namely — Pompey, distinguished by his military 
merits, Coesar by his great talents, and Crassus by his riches. 
Crassus lost his life in an expedition against the Parthians ; 
and now the two others stood alone, each heartily wishing 
to get rid of the other as his rival, because each liked 
absolute dominion best. Csesar, whose private name be- 
came the origin of that of a succession of emperors, was a 
man of good education, distinguished talents, much variety 
of knowledge, and great industry and perseverance. As 
a prudent and brave general he has seldom been equaled ; 
and was alike skillful in the use of the sword and the pen. 
His celebrated expeditions in Gaul, a country which he 
entirely subdued, and his exploits in Britain and in 



114 THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 

"Western Germany, which countries he was the first of 
the Romans to invade, have been excellently described 
by himself in his " Commentaries." But he had 
one weakness, which, though it at first served to elevate 
him, yet, at length, occasioned his overthrow — he could 
endure no superior, nor any equal ; but he would be lord 
alone. This same weakness, or disease, has brought many 
to ruin, either temporally or spiritually. Coesar, at Cadiz, 
saw a statue of Alexander the Great, and said with tears 
to his attendants, " Had he lived to my age, he had con- 
quered the world ; and I have as yet done nothing." On 
another occasion he was heard to say, that he would rather 
be the first person in a village than a second person at 
Rome. From such a man, who so passionately longed for 
dominion, the liberty of Rome had little good to expect ; 
and Cassar, as soon as an opportunity permitted, marched 
with his experienced soldiers, a whole army devoted to him, 
into Italy, to crush his rival Pompey. Italy soon yielded 
to his arms ; Pompey was defeated in the battle of Phar- 
salia, B. C. 48, (in which German soldiers fought among 
Caesai''s troops,) and he was murdered in Egypt. Caesar, 
indeed, had still to contend with difficulty against Pompey's 
adherents in Africa and Spain ; but he remained conqueror, 
and now the object of his desires was attained. The 
Roman senate appointed him dictator for ten years, and 
gave him the title of Imperator, or commander, whence 
the word emperor. Even the regal crown was offered 
him ; but he chose rather to possess the real power than 
the hated title of king, and this power he well knew how 
to secure. He spared no pains to hush the malcontents, 
and to make the people amends for their lost liberty. The 
enormous wealth which he had amassed, in his wars, was 
distributed by him liberally and extravagantly. Each 
soldier got a thousand dollars, and every Roman citizen 
received twenty. Oil and corn were bestowed by him in 
abundance ; great theatrical shows, as fights of wild beasts, 



THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 115 

etc., were given for the entertainment of the multitude. 
On one occasion, all the inhabitants of Rome were feasted 
in twenty-two thousand rooms, at his own expense ; and 
in every room was set two butts of wine. General luxury, 
wantonness, and debauch were at a great height in Rome, 
at this period. The rich lived in Asiatic pomp and effemi- 
nacy: their houses were of marble, and decorated with 
ivory, silver, and gold. The sumptuous delicacies of all 
countries were collected together at their repasts. A 
single supper, for a few friends, cost ten thousand dollars : 
and a spendthrift, wlio had run through all his property 
except two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, committed 
suicide, because he foresaw that what he had remaining 
would serve him for only a single year. 

While, on the one hand, the highest refinements of sen- 
suality unnerved the Romans — and in order to meet such 
extravagance, they practiced injustice, oppressions, and 
exactions of all kinds, especially in their conquered pro- 
vinces — there increased, on the other hand, among the 
people in general, by natural connection and consequence, 
indolence, rudeness, and dissoluteness, in a restless and 
disturbing manner ; and the example of the great and rich 
failed not of its intiuence upon the very dregs of the peo- 
ple, who now, in their own way, gave free course to the 
incitements of the corrupt heart, and developed all manner 
of gross sins and vices. A few valuable individuals, such 
as the stern Cato, and the distinguished orator and states- 
man, Cicero, who also gave his mind to philosophical pur- 
suits, could do nothing to stem the torrent of corruption, 
and were even themselves in part assimilated to tlie per- 
verse notions of their loose contemporaries. 

Rome, however, still contained a goodly number of her 
better citizens, who beheld with sorrow the long preserved 
liberty of their country fallen under the yoke of a single 
despot ; and though they did not take the right method 
for its deliverance, namely, that which God approves or 



116 THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 

commends, yet some allowance must be made for the times 
and cii'cumstances in which they lived, as also for their 
defective knowledge, by reason of which, their aim, though 
noble in itself, took a very wrong direction. The arbitrary 
despotism wdth which Csesar managed the people, and op- 
pressed their liberties, gave occasion to these men to form 
a secret conspiracy against him ; and under the conduct 
of Brutus, a descendant of the ancient Brutus, who put an 
end to the monarchy, they undertook to assassinate him. 
He fell, pierced v/ith daggers, while presiding in the 
senate, B. C. 44; a warning example to all who evince 
much bravery in the conquest of others, and none in the 
denial of themselves. 

But the Romans were no longer worthy of a free con- 
stitution of govermnent ; that is, they had become ripe for 
the severer discipline and monarchy of a despotic ruler. 
Brutus raised an army, but was beaten, and fell upon his 
own sword. Octavianus and Antony united to avenge Cassar's 
death, and then jointly governed Rome. But they soon 
disagreed, and came to open war, in which Antony fell at 
the battle of Actium, B. C. 31 ; and Octavianus, Csesar's 
adopted son, quickly brought matters to such a crisis, that 
he got the whole power into his own hands, and dared to 
assume the name of Augustus, or the Illustrious. 

With Augustus, the Roman empire had already at- 
tained its summit of glory ; and, after his time, it gradually 
declined. The Roman empire was now the empire of the 
world, the centre about which all profane history turns, 
and to which all events recorded in it bear some relation. 
It was the centre of all nations, at least of all which were 
within its knowledge or influence. A powder consolidated 
at home, and respected abroad, had been formerly the 
modest aim and ambition of the Roman people ; but now, 
like a youth who turns some particular emergency to an 
assurance respecting his future destination in life, so Rome, 
from the period of the Punic Wars, came to an assurance 



RETKOSPECT OF ANCIENT HISTORY. 117 

of her being destined to become the mistress of the world ; 
and, from that period, she labored with a zeal which never 
lost sight of the attainment of this object. And as before 
this time, so now still more than ever, was the iron charac^ 
ter of this power, as "stamping everything to pieces," 
made manifest ; and the nations had severely to feel its 
seliish hardness, and its inflexible pride. It was the fourth 
beast in Daniel's vision, Dan. vii, 7, " dreadful and terrible, 
and strong exceedingly ; and it had great iron teeth : it 
devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue 
with the feet of it." Thus was Carthage trodden down, 
and thus Jerusalem. 
\ 
v.— RETROSPECT OF ANCIENT HISTORY. 

Thus have the great empires of the world been, one 
after another, presented on the theatre of profane history ; 
and each of them has, in its own way, summoned every 
efifort to make its power the only valid and durable one, to 
shape the world after its own liking, and to establish the 
felicity of the human race by human wisdom. But from 
one such successive empire to another, and indeed from 
one century to another, it has been continually more and 
more evident that all the glory of the world passeth away, 
and that the real welfare of man is not to be expected from 
this world. At the very time when Rome had concen- 
trated in herself, and brought to the highest perfection of 
enjoyment, all the advantages and privileges of preceding 
empires, {.great military power, general commerce, activity 
and skiU in every trade and profession, refinement and 
splendor of luxury and pomp, with education m arts and 
sciences ; and when, from the union of power abroad with 
the rise and development of all the intellectual powers at 
home, the greatest things might have been expected for 
the deliverance and welfare of the nations, and more im- 
mediately of the Romans themselves ; at that very period, 
the decline of the ancient order of things, and of the ancient 



118 RETROSPECT OF ANCIENT HISTORY. 

nations, was beginning j and at the trunk of the great tree, 
that stretched its verdant branches into all lands, a cor- 
rotling rottenness had already commenced. 
/Except in the little country of Judea, there reigned in 
all lands idolatry in its various forms, and with it were 
almost everywhere inseparably connected the grossest sins. 
Inasmuch, then, as the heathen, in the very places where 
encouragement and strength for what is good ought to have 
been attained, namely, in the temples of their gods, were 
only the more incited and privileged to sin; we cannot 
wonder that all the bands of discipline and self-government 
became loosened, and that the shamelessness of vice in- 
creased with every succeeding eentury./ Rather we must 
wonder that this did not happen sooner, more precipitately, 
and more widely ; and that among a people in whom the 
foundation of morals was so undermined, there should still 
be found men who opposed the influence of the general 
corruption, and kept themselves comparatively clean in 
the midst of defilement, and by their faithfulness to their 
little knowledge, by their strong courage and remarkable 
self-denial, put to shame many Christians of our own times. 
This striking phenomenon can only be explained by the 
fact, that God, though he " suffered all nations to Avalk in 
their own ways, yet left not himself without witness among 
them." Such "witness" of his among the heathen was 
manifold; but was comprehended only by the thinking, 
and the lovers of truth. The manifestation of God in their 
conscience, by the sight of his works, was perverted to 
idolatry ; which was a distortion and disfiguration of that 
original true knowledge, which was derived from early 
times, and from traditions of God's revelations to mankind. 
That God did much good to the heathen nations, giving 
them rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, and filling 
their hearts with food and gladness, (Acts xiv, 17,) was a 
fact that should lead an ingenuous and observing mind to 
the recognition of his greatness and goodness ; and even 



RETROSPECT OF ANCIENT HISTORY. 119 

his judgments, which from time to time he suffered to fall 
upon a corrupt member or portion of the human race, 
ought to have brought such a mind into humble subjection 
to his power. Such seasons of judgment were those which 
came upon Sodom, Egypt, Tyre, Babylon, Carthage, and 
Jerusalem. Among the millions who were ruined by the 
conquering wars of Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, Alexander, 
flnd Julius Caesar, there may have been many a soul who, 
ill the hour of severe trial, directed a sighing, supplicating 
look upward to the unknown God. Fire and hail, storm 
and inundation, famine and drought, earthquake and tem- 
pest, executed, from time to time, the message of God to 
men ; and certainly this message was understood by one 
and another at various times. How often has God, by 
pestilence, given the nations witness of his dissatisfaction 
with them ! This was of frequent occuri'ence in the Jewish 
history. On one occasion, seventy thousand men died in 
a few hours, 2 Sam. xxiv, 15 ; Assyria lost one hundred 
and eighty-five thousand men in one night ; in the time of 
Tarquinius Priscus, the fifth king of Rome, the pestilence 
carried off the greatest part of the Roman people ; about 
the time when Nehemiah rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem, 
in the second year of the Peloponnesian War, B. C. 430, 
the pestilence extended over Ethiopia, Libya, Egypt, Ju- 
dea, Phenicia, Syria, the whole Persian and Roman em- 
pire, Greece and the neighboring countries, and raged for 
fifteen years together. From the putrefaction of the ruins 
of Carthage, a pestilential sickness ran through all North 
Africa, and destroyed in Numidia alone eight hundred 
thousand persons. This pestilence was so dreadful, that 
in one day, in one city, and through one gate, more than 
fifteen hundred human carcasses were borne to the pit ; 
and, in the same city, within a few days, above two hun- 
dred thousand persons died. Two years before tlie birth 
of Christ, the pestilence pervaded all Italy, and left but 
few persons to cultivate the ground. Who can suppose 



120 RETROSPECT OF ANCIENT IIISTORV. 

that all these visitations of God were utterly in vain ! that 
some, at least, did not become sobered by them, and 
awakened to submit themselves to God ! 

There were also, besides, found here and there indi- 
viduals in whom a special efficacy of the Spirit of God 
became visible in the midst of pagan darkness, and who 
were not without influence upon those around them. Let 
us think only of Socrates, the Greek pliilosopher, who, in 
the very focus of blinding heathen idolatry, found his way 
to the knowledge that there can be only one true God ; 
and who expressly asserted that a guardian spirit stood by 
liim, to assist him in obtaining this purer knowledge. Let 
us think of his disciple Plato, who has received into his 
philosophy so many traces and lineaments of truth. At 
the same time we cannot overlook the certainly not incon- 
siderable influence v.hich the dispersion of the Israelites, 
and hereby the diffusion of their purer knowledge of God, 
had upon the ideas of the heathen with whom they came 
in contact. This dispersion of the Israelites was not con- 
fined to Assyria, Babylon, and Egypt, where they dwelt in 
greater numbers, and, as it were, in mass ; a whole circle 
of other countries are mentioned in the Acts of the Apos- 
tles, (chap, ii, 9-11,) as places of their dispersion. How 
could the heathen, with all this various intercourse which 
the Jews had among them, have failed to become acquainted 
with their God and religion, their history and their laws ? 
Indeed, there was, even in the temple of Jerusalem, a 
special quarter reserved for the heathen themselves, which 
was called " the court of the Gentiles," where those Gen- 
tiles worshiped the God of Israel who had become ac- 
quainted with him through their Israelitish neighbors. 
Meanwhile God's purpose, to stir up by the leadings of his 
providence a desire among the nations for a mighty De- 
liverer, was in some measure answered ; and the severe 
oppression, which had only continued to increase by the 
ever frustrated attempt of the great successive empires to 



RETROSPECT OF ANCIENT HISTORY. 121 

better the condition of the world, so sensibly burdened the 
spirits of men, that the longing for a deliverance sought 
everywhere to give itself vent. The obscure predictions 
which were propagated either in the esoteric or secret 
doctrine of philosophers, or among the popular legends of 
the vulgar, and which were found preserved either in the 
enigmatical sayings of their ancient writers, or in deeply 
studied chronological computations, all marvelously coin- 
cided respecting that one and the same period, the period 
of the Messiah's birth. About the time when Augustus, 
the emperor of the Romans, was born, " a prophet of their 
own" (see Tit. i, 12) announced that the period was come } 

for the birth of Him who should be Lord and King over |^ 
all. Similar predictions were at that time brought to light, '•' / ^ 
and circulated in Italy and other countries ; and not only^^ /V 
was the journey of the eastern magi to Jerusalem very \ u 
remarkable, but also there was a great stir among the then *) 

inhabitants of North Germany, who had been put in com- 
motion by the eastern rumors. In general, the remarkable vJ 
commotion which had already commenced among the 
hordes of western Asia, and which subsequently broke out 
in their gi-eat national emigrations, seems only to be ex- 
plained by that expectation of a change in the state of the 
world which pervaded all nations at the period above- 
mentioned. This change of the world was, however, of 
quite another kind from what the nations expected, and 
was to be looked for rather in its gradual consequences I 

and effects, than in its external commencement and cha- 
racter. It set out from a little point ; it began its work 
from within, herein differing altogether from preceding 4 

empires of the world ; and the great King and universal \ 

Renovator, " the Desire of all nations," was bom into the i 

world in the stable of an inn in Bethlehem of Judea. * 

6 



122 BIRTH AND HISTORY OF CHRIST. 



FOURTH PERIOD. 

FROM THE TIME OF AUGUSTUS TO THE IRRUPTION 
OF THE NORTHERN NATIONS. 

B. C. 27. A. D. 375. 

I.— THE BIRTH AND HISTORY OF CHRIST. 

In the year 39 B. C, Herod the Idumean, also named 
the Great, was appointed king of Jiidea by the Roman 
senate. Two years after this, he took Jerusalem, extir- 
pated all who remained of the Maccabean dynasty, and 
maintained his tenure of the crown chiefly by becommg an 
early adherent of Augustus. As he was of heathen de- 
scent, he resolved to prove the sincerity of his attachment 
to his adopted rehgion by repairing and beautifying at 
great expense the temple of Jerusalem, which had suffered 
much damage under the Syrian government. This repa- 
ration and gi'eat addition to the temple, wliich was con- 
tinued by the Jews after his death, was not completed till 
A. D. 64. In the latter period of the work eighteen thou- 
sand men were employed about it. But Herod was, never- 
theless, hated for his tyranny ; and this tended to increase 
and strengthen more and more among the people of Israel, 
who for a long time had seen nothing of good days, their 
longing after the final accomplishment of the ancient pro- 
phecies. Yet is it at the same time to be observed, that 
the greatest part of the people had already become so de- 
based by tyranny and oppression, and so obdurate by 
wickedness, that the news of the appearance of a new-bom 
king of Judea excited terror among them instead of joy ; 
and only a few, that were " quiet in the land," sighed for 
the coming of the promised Messiah. Yet to keep alive, 
by all means, and to strengthen, even in these few, such 



BIRTH AND HISTORY OF CHRIST. 123 

an earnest longing, was a thing sufficiently important. It 
is true, that all the Jews still expected a Messiah, but of 
quite another kind. They would have a deliverer from 
the Roman yoke; a king, who should again make them 
the first, the most important, and the most prosperous na- 
tion upon earth, and bring the dominion of the world, 
which was now in the hands of the Romans, into the hands 
of the Jewish nation. How the Jews came to indulge 
these expectations it is very easy to understand. In the 
writings of their ancient prophets they found actual pro- 
mises, which encouraged them to look forward to prosper- 
ous days. But the Jews in general could not, with their 
earthly and fleshly mind, comprehend the spiritual part 
of those prophecies ; and hence they formed their notion 
of a Messiah out of the imagination and wishes of their 
own corrupt heart. 

Li Bethlehem, a little town lying south of Jerusalem, 
and celebrated as the birth-place of King David, was 
Christ (the Messiah, or Anointed) born, of a virgin af- 
fianced to Joseph, a carpenter, of Nazareth ; and the vir- 
gin's name was Mary. To her it had been announced, by 
the appearing of an angel, that, through the power of the 
Holy Ghost, she should beai* the Son of the Highest, the 
Desire of all nations. Mary was of the royal line of Da- 
vid, which had now sunk into obscurity ; and thus was 
fulfilled the prediction which God had given him. 2 Sara, 
vii. Wonderful appearances of angels at his birth, con- 
firmatory testimonies from the mouth of pious Israelites 
on the occasion of his being presented in the temple, the 
arrival of the magi from Chaldea, who desired to do hom- 
age to the new-born King, and had seen his star in the 
East, the preservation of the child from the bloody perse- 
cution of Herod, — all this was to Mary and Joseph a 
strengthening of their faith, and an encouragement to 
bring up the child committed to their trust as carefully as 
their humble condition would admit. After this, the child 



124 BIRTH AND HISTORY OF CHRIST. 

continued in quiet retirement ; and of his childhood and 
youth we have but one single account preserved, namely, 
of his going up to Jerusalem at the feast of the passover 
when he was twelve years old. His preparation for his 
great public ministry was quite opposite to the ordinary 
manner. Whenever, at that period, a Greek or a Roman 
would prepare himself to become an orator or teacher, he 
used to repair to the schools of celebrated orators and phi- 
losophers, and read the writings of the ancient sages. The 
Romans went to Greece for their education ; the Greeks 
had, long before, resorted in Hke manner to Egypt, to 
study the occult wisdom of the priests. The Jews sat at 
the feet of some noted scribe or doctor of the law, (such 
as was Gamaliel in our Saviour's time,) and thus obtained 
instruction in the law and their traditions. The Lord Je- 
sus Christ never went through any such school of educa- 
tion ; therefore the Jews exclaimed, with astonishment, 
when he stood up to teach in their streets and synagogues, 
" Whence hath this man tliis wisdom, seeing that he hath 
never learned?" John vii, 15. He needed not to go to 
the turbid streams which run out of the conduits of human 
science and opinion ; for in " liim are hid all the treasures 
of wisdom and knowledge." Though " God over all, 
blessed for ever," yet as man, and appearing as a child, 
he " increased in wisdom and stature." Even his enemies 
were constrained to admire his wisdom and excellences. 
It was not, however, till the thirtieth year of his age that 
he came forth from his concealment ; and then, upon oc- 
casion of his baptism, administered to him in the river Jor- 
dan, by John, the great prophet and preacher of repent- 
ance, he was solemnly declared, by a voice from heaven, 
to be the Son of God. Immediately after this event, 
having abode forty days in the wilderness, and endured 
various temptations from Satan, the prince of this world, 
he went into Galilee, and gathered to himself a small com- 
pany of disciples, from among fishermen, publicans, and 



BIRTH AND HISTORY OF CHRIST. 125 

other persons without education and without influence, 
whom he admitted from that time into constant intercourse 
with himself. These he led, at every opportunity, to such 
a consideration of the world, mankind, and futurity, as 
contauied little in it in common Avith men's ordinary no- 
tions. In his addresses to the people assembled to hear 
him, and who were attracted to him in great multitudes by 
Ids powerful words and matchless miracles, he taught them 
without any acconmiodation to their prejudices and erro- 
neous expectations. Like John the Baptist, he preached, 
" Repent ; for the heavenly kingdom is amved." At an- 
other time he said to the Pharisees, " Behold, the kmgdom 
of Gk)d is among you." Luke xvii, 21. 

Hitherto the great empires which successively prevailed 
had been " of this world ;" but now was set up in the / 
earth a kingdom of God, a heavenly kingdom ; inward, V 
invisible, and therefore not acknowledged nor discerned ! 
by the Jews. Preparations for tliis kingdom there had / 
been under the Old Testament dispensation ; but now the 
kingdom was itself arrived. And though it began in little- 
ness and obscurity, yet it gradually extended itself, so that 
its exterior setting up changed all the forms of the govern- 
ments of the world and of human life ; and its essence, 
namely, the communion of God's childi-en, though external- 
ly unperceived, unacknowledged, despised, and persecuted, 
yet, by its inward and vital power, exercised the most de- 
cided influence upon the affairs and history of all the world. 
But as that saying of Jesus, that " his kingdom," the king- 
dom of Messiah, " cometh not with observation," was con- 
tradictory to the expectations of the Jews, and therefore 
offensive to them, so still more offensive was the implied 
declaration, that they, in their present state of mind, were 
unfit for that kingdom. And as he publicly reproved the 
Pharisees and scribes in particular, for their unrighteous- 
ness, hypocrisy, and willful ignorance, so they made use of 
their great influence over the people in opposing Jesus of 



126 BIRTH AND HISTORY OP CHRIST. 

Nazareth. It is true, that Jesus, by his many beneficent 
miracles, secured to himself the good will and esteem of 
the people ; but the Jews were a fickle and versatile race, 
and, with few exceptions, had no love for the truth. 
Therefore they were offended at his sayings, when he de- 
clared that God was his Father, that he came down from 
heaven, that he was before Abraham, and that he should 
return to heaven. At length things came to such a crisis 
that the priests and teachers of the people, who could not 
but fear they should lose their influence through that of 
Jesus, contrived so to infuse their enmity into the multi- 
tude, as to alter the disposition of the majority, and per- 
suade them to demand the death of Jesus. Pilate, the 
Roman procurator, wltliout whose consent no public exe- 
cution could take place, was weak enough to yield to their 
impetuous demands against his better judgment, and per- 
mitted Jesus to be sacrificed by crucifixion, a Roman mode 
of punishment inflicted only upon slaves. This he did 
under the pretext that Christ had attempted to set himself 
up as king of the Jews, and was consequently to be re- 
garded as a rebel against the Roman government. Thus 
was the great plan of God, in making his Son a propitia- 
tion for sin, brought to pass by men ; and. without know- 
ing or intending it, they were thus led to fulfill the divine 
counsel and purposes. The fact, that even God's chosen 
people had become so depraved, as rancorously to put to 
death the Son of God when he appeared as their greatest 
Benefactor and Deliverer, was an evident proof to what 
a high pitch of wickedness the world had come. By his 
Bpotless obedience in the most trying temptations, both 
temporal and spiritual, and by the depth of his humiliation, 
even the death of the cross, which he underwent for the 
sins of the world, he gave proof to heaven and earth that 
he was " able to save to the uttermost all that come unto 
God by him." And because men were not only deficient 
in knowledge of the truth, but corrupted in their whole na- 



FIRST PROMULGATION OF CHRISTIANITY. 127 

ture by sin, he sent the Holy Spii'it, to renew, enliven, and 
sanctify theii' souls. God raised Christ from the sepulchre, 
and exalted him to his own right hand in the tlu-one of 
heaven, which was a proof that his sacrifice was accepted ; 
and there he carries on the great work of restoring man's 
fallen race. For tliis end God has delivered to him, in 
liis mediatorial character, the unlimited government of the 
whole world, of nature, providence, and gi'ace. From that 
act in heaven a new period of government began. Christ 
now sits upon the throne of the Majesty on high, and ac- 
complishes the divine will in the world after a new man- 
ner. The effects of this government become gradually 
visible on earth to those who have been taught concerning 
the plan of salvation. The kingdom of God is spreading 
itself among all nations, and is pervading the human mass 
as a slowly but surely working leaven : the world is ac- 
quiring another form, and in many individuals the blessed 
Redeemer is daily accomplishing the great work of pre- 
paring them for and bringing them to heaven. 

II.— THE FIRST PROMULGATION OF CHRIS- 
TIANITY. 

That this plan of God's government may become known, 
he has provided the Holy Scriptures of the New Testa- 
ment, written by inspired disciples of Jesus, and which 
connectedly comprise the history of his life on earth, the 
first extension of his church, and the counsel of God con- 
cerning the world at large. The writers were fitted for 
their task by that Holy Spirit of Christ which, after his 
ascension, he poured out upon them at the Pentecost, and 
which thoroughly qualified them to fulfill the commission 
he had given them. They were also endowed with mira- 
culous powers. They, and others similarly qualified, were 
commanded to go forth among all nations, and to carry the 
good tidings to every creature, informing them that a new 
period had now arisen upon the world, that the Saviour 



128 FIRST PROMULGATION OF CHRISTIANITY. 

of his people had visited it, had made atonement by his 
death for the sins of the whole world, and that whosoever 
henceforth by faith turned to hun, should be delivered by 
his power from the bondage of sin and Satan, and pass 
from death to life. "Whoever believed, "through their 
word," that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ, the Mes- 
siah, the anointed of God, the long-promised and expected 
Saviour of the world, every such person was consecrated 
by baptism as a follower of Jesus, and was added to the 
fellowship of his beheving people. This fellowship, , or 
communion, is called the church. At first it was regarded 
as a modified branch of the Jewish church, but when the 
temple at Jerusalem was destroyed, it still remained, and 
it became manifest that it had a foundation of its own. 
Its fii'st members were Jews ; and when the apostles be- 
gan to go forth into other lands, they first addressed them- 
selves to the Jews scattered everywhere, and then began 
to address the Gentiles after the Jews had rejected their 
message. Thus came the doctrine of Christ to the large 
commercial cities of Lesser Asia, siich as Smyrna, Ephe- 
sus, and Miletus ; then to Macedonia, whence the third 
great monarchy of the world arose ; then to Athens, still 
the seat of education and the school of taste ; and to Co- 
rinth, which had recovered in some measure from its great 
humiliation. How little the spirit of Grecian wisdom and 
worldly education stood related to the wisdom and truth 
of God, was evinced at their first meeting together. The 
excellent address of the apostle Paul at Athens was heard, 
with proud contempt or scornful levity ; and we are in- 
formed of only a few who received the word of truth into 
their hearts. 

The kingdom of God came not among men with that 
observation and display of importance with which the em- 
pires of the world were set up: in littleness, quietness, 
and comparative obscurity, joining in with but few of the 
external circumstances already subsisting among the Jews^ 



AUGUSTUS AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 129 

avoiding only all communion wdth idolatry and sin, it 
nevertheless made regulai* and successful progress. Its 
distinguished apostle, Paul, worked as a tentmaker, and 
also dictated inspired epistles, replete with profound and 
heavenly wisdom : and while he was a prisoner at Rome 
it never occurred to its luxurious citizens that a kingdom 
had already commenced which should be the first to give 
to their empire a totally different form, and then utterly 
to dissolve it. 

III.— REIGN OF AUGUSTUS AND HIS SUCCESSORS, 
TO THE TIME OF VESPASIAN. 

Meanwhile the long reign of Augustus had come to its 
end. If the Romans reflected on his entry into Rome with 
Antony and Lepidus, in the year 43 B. C, on which oc- 
casion three hundred senators, two thousand knights, a 
great multitude of other citizens, and among them the ora- 
tor Cicero, were massacred, they could not have hoped for 
much good from his rule : things, however, went on better 
in his reign than was expected. He was a lenient prince, 
enacted good laws, loved justice, and was an enemy to 
luxury ; in short, the Romans felt themselves happy under 
his government. The Roman empire was at that time 
more extended than any of the preceding great empires 
had ever been : it embraced Italy, with the neighboring 
islands, Helvetia, (Switzerland,) Belgium, Britain, Portu- 
gal, Spain, France, the whole northern coast of Africa, 
Egypt, Upper Asia as far as the Caspian Sea and beyond 
the Euphrates and Tigris, Asia Minor, Greece, the pre- 
sent European Turkey, and the southern portion of Ger- 
many as far as the Danube. But in the north of Ger- 
many the Romans never could obtain firm footing ; and a 
fine Roman army under Varus was cut to pieces in the 
Teutonian Forest, between the Rhine and the Weser, (in 
the county of Lippe,) by the German general Hermann, 
(Arminius.) 

6* 



130 AUGXTSTUS AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 

In the Augustan age the arts and sciences were in the 
highest state of cultivation ; the former were generally 
promoted by the Greeks, and the latter had, at least, their 
origin from the schools of Greece. Sallust, Tacitus, and 
Livy, as historians, and Virgil and Horace, as poets, will 
bear comparison with the Greeks themselves, not to men- 
tion other celebrated writers of that age. But it is a re- 
mark of portentous consideration, that the most flourishmg 
periods of art and science among the Greeks and Romans 
were also the periods of their greatest luxury ; and that 
from those periods, respectively, their prosperity began 
rapidly to decline. 

Augustus found but little enjoyment in the great public 
good fortune, as it is called, which had befallen him. He 
had no peace in his own family ; his empress was a scan- 
dalous woman ; and from his children he experienced only 
heartbreaking sorrow. He had to learn upon a minor 
scale, what nations in all ages have to learn upon a larger 
one, that all the prosperity, power, and riches of this world 
cannot render man happy while he wants true peace and 
a right state of heart. His adopted son, Tiberius, suc- 
ceeded him in the throne, A. D. 14, in whose reign Christ 
was crucified at Jerusalem. He was a tyrant, who spent 
his imperial life in monstrous cruelties and infamous lusts, 
and found horrible gratification in seeing men murdered in 
his presence. Yet his successor Caligula was more de- 
praved, an impotent slave to his unbridled passions, who 
wished that the Roman people had but one neck that he 
might decapitate them at a blow. For the relief of the 
world, his reign was terminated in four years ; and he, 
like his predecessor, was assassinated. After him reigned 
Claudius, A. D. 41-54, or rather, reigned not ; for he was 
a man too weak and unlit for empire, the business of 
which he committed to his scandalous women Messalina 
and Agrippina ; and the latter got rid of him by poison. 
The next turn was that of Nero, who had been strictly 



DESTRUCTION OP JERUSALEM. 131 

educated by the philosophic Seneca, whose pains he re- 
warded by causing him to be put to death ; he also put to 
death his own mother. If his predecessors did badly, he 
surpassed them in frantic cruelty and monstrous inhumanity. 
He caused the city of Rome to be set on fire, and threw 
the odium of it upon the Christians, who lived quietly in 
Rome, and who had some adherents among his own im- 
perial household : hence they were tortured and executed 
in the most barbarous manner. In his reign the apostle 
Paul was beheaded at Rome. Wlien vengeance began to 
threaten Nero for his enormities he put an end to his life, 
A. D. 68. Of his three successive followers in the im- 
perial throne, Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, there is nothing 
to say, except that they were invested with the purple by 
the power of the military; a distinction of which they 
were by no means worthy, and from which they also 
almost immediately fell by the hands of vengeance. 

IV.— THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM, AND 
PERSECUTION OF THE CHRISTIANS. 

Rome once again experienced a better period, under a 
succession of more respectable rulers, which commenced 
with Vespasian. Had the corrupt and rotten mass suffered 
itself to be made fresh by the salt of Christianity, a new 
life would have been diffused throughout the empire : but 
the humility of a Christian spirit was revolting to Roman 
pride ; and wherever the one came in contact with the 
other, there it was evident that enmity against the truth 
formed a fundamental part of the Roman character. Ves- 
pasian, for a heathen, was a noble prince ; he removed 
abuses which had invaded all classes, and restored a better 
order of things. He was, as a private man, temperate; 
as a judge, upright ; and, as a general, successful. The 
great coliseum at Rome, a huge amphitheatre, with seats 
for the accommodation of sixty thousand persons, and 
which still remains, was built by him. He had been sent 



132 DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM, AND 

in Nero's reign with an army to Syria, to quell and chas- 
tise the insurgent Jews, who, however, defended themselves 
against him with inflexible obstinacy. Just at the time 
when he was besieging Jerusalem itself, he was called 
away to assume the reins of empire, and left the pro- 
secution of the siege to his son Titus. As an immense 
multitude of persons were now collected within the city, 
Titus considered it the safest measure to shut them up in 
it by a circumvallation, and thus starve the inhabitants to a 
surrender. Previously to this, the Christians who dwelt 
there, regarding Christ's admonitory prophecy, had fled 
chiefly to Pella, a little town near the Jordan, and thereby 
escaped the horrors of the siege. The famine within the 
city became dreadful. People endeavored to gain a short 
respite from death by the most unnatural means ; besides 
which there was a most sanguinary and desperate conten- 
tion raging between opposite parties within the walls. 
Still the Jews surrendered not ; and Titus had to take, by 
storm, one portion of the city after another. Even the 
beautiful temple, one of the then architectural wonders of 
the world, and which Titus sincerely desired to spare, was 
set on fire contrary to liis express orders, and, together 
with the city, was reduced to a heap of ruins and ashes. 
An immense multitude perished, and the remainder were 
led away captive, and gradually dispersed into all coun- 
tries ; but no longer as that salt to the earth, and light to 
the world, which Israel had proved to be in former desola- 
tions ; for they were now like salt that had lost its savor, 
an obdurate mass that had unhappily become impenetrable 
to the renovating and enlightening power of Christianity. 
Titus obtained and celebrated at Rome a trimnph, which 
many captive Jews were obliged to grace, and at which 
the sacred vessels of the temple, as the golden candlestick, 
etc, were publicly exhibited in the procession. The great 
triumphal arch which v/as built for this solemn pomp of 
victory is yet standing ; and some of the medals that were 



PERSECUTION OF THE CHRISTIANS. 133 

struck in commemoration of the event are to be seen in 
cabinets of ancient coins. They represent " the daughter 
of Zion" sitting in a weeping posture under a palm-tree, 
and are inscribed with the words, " Judea Capta," (Ju- 
dea captured.) 

Thus did Christianity lose its earliest residence, where 
it had passed its minority beneath the harsh guardianship 
of the Jewish church, and had now to seek for itself a new 
home in the West. Thus, " through the fall of the Jews, 
salvation is come unto the Gentiles ;" and it is these that 
St. Peter now addresses in his First Epistle, chap, ii, 9, 10, 
" Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy 
nation, a peculiar people ; that ye should show forth the 
excellences of him who hath called you out of darkness 
into his marvelous light : who in times past were not a 
people, but are now the people of God : who had not ob- 
tained mercy, but now have obtained mercy." It is easy 
to comprehend how the haughty Romans found no pleasure 
in such a doctrine as this, which could attribute precedency 
to any "nation" except their own. 

Titus was a good public governor, and had amiable 
qualities as a private man, which obtained him the title of 
"The delight of the human race." He endeavored to 
mark every day with some act of beneficence, and regarded 
a day as lost in which nothing of the kind had been done. 
But happy as the Romans accounted themselves during 
his reign, it was distinguished by some unavoidable mis- 
fortunes ; as if God had intended to give that people to 
understand that their sins had deserved nothing else but 
rebuke and wrath. A great part of Rome was destroyed 
by an accidental conflagration ; famine and pestilence 
ravaged the whole of Italy ; and, lastly, two cities in Lower 
Italy, namely, Herculaneum and Pompeii, were buried in 
ashes by an extraordinary eruption of Mount Vesuvius, 
A. D. 79. There must have been great and crying sins 
prevalent in these cities, though not in them alone, (see 



134 DESTRUCTION OP JERUSALEM, AND 

Luke xiii, 1-5,) that God should thus have visited them 
with Sodom's judgment.* Their ruins began to be dis- 
interred about a century ago, and the excavations have 
recently been renewed. Everything discovered therein 
was to be seen just in the situation that belonged to it at 
the moment when these cities were overwhelmed, only 
most of such things are blackened or half consumed by the 
burning ashes. All sorts of household furniture were 
found in their places ; fruits and provisions were lying on 
the tables ; human skeletons in every variety of place and 
posture, just as the persons had each been overtaken by 
"sudden destruction," were discovered, some standing, others 
sitting, whichever way the visitors turned. But of the 
thousands who yearly visit these disinterred cities, how 
few, it is to be feared, think of the judgments of God which 
desolated those places for their crying sins ; although 
among the pictures and other antique relics many a silent 
but speaking witness is still found, to tell in what habitual 
sins those cities had already buried themselves, before the 
burning ashes were rained upon them by the divine 
judgments. 

During the reigns of Vespasian and Titus, the Christian 
churches, of which there were many, and one even at 
Rome, had rest and peace, and were edified and spread 
abroad. Not that there was any express or enacted tolera- 
tion of them, but they were let alone and not inquired 
after. Is it not possible that Titus, in his expedition 
against Jerusalem, had an opportunity of learning to esteem 
and respect the Christians ? Surely his mere natural in- 
tegrity of disposition could not have prevented him from 
hating them. His natural disposition would not be a suffi- 
cient security to Christians, for Trajan and Hadrian, who 
were as upright as himself, yet persecuted them. Very 
unlike him was his own brother and successor Domitian, 

* It was an overthrow, which, though not miraculous like that 
of Sodom and Gomorrlia, in some respects resembled it. — Trans. 



PERSECUTION OF THE CHRISTIANS. 135 

who was the only really bad emperor within the space of a 
whole century. He resembled Tiberius in cowardice and 
cruelty, and in being a slave to avarice and debauchery. 
During his reign, and in a persecution of the Christians 
which he instituted, the apostle John was banished to the 
isle of Patmos, in the Greek Archipelago, where he wrote 
the Apocalypse. Domitian's successor, Nerva, who set the 
apostle at liberty, A. D. 96-98, was a mild and beneficent 
prince, who, in the short period of his reign, devised many 
prudent measures for the benefit of his subjects. Like- 
minded, but more powerful, was his successor Trajan, who 
also allowed the Romans as much liberty as they could 
bear, added Dacia (now Moldavia and Wallachia) to the 
Roman provinces, subdued the Parthians, and conquered 
part of Arabia. He was condescending, kind, frugal, and 
beneficent : his popularity is attested by the lofty pillar 
erected to his memory, which is still standing at Rome. He 
was not a friend to the Christians, and even permitted 
them to be persecuted and put to death. Probably he 
never knew their real character ; and yet he heard Igna- 
tius, bishop of Antioch, as a witness of the truth, address 
him at Rome ; but he ordered him to be thrown to the 
wild beasts in the theatre. Equally averse to them was 
his successor Hadrian, who in other respects was a good 
governor, fond of peace, and so concerned for the welfare 
of his subjects, that he traveled on foot through a large 
part of his empire, reformed abuses, and made beneficial 
regulations. His persecuting the Christians may, perhaps, 
be principally attributed to the then prevailing notion that 
they were nothing more than a Jewish sect ; and the Jews 
had provoked the emperor's displeasure by a very formi- 
dable rebellion which they had commenced in the East, 
under their leader, Barcochab, who pretended to be the 
Messiah, and which it took a great deal of trouble to sup- 
press. From that time no Jew was permitted to be seen 
at Jerusalem ; Hadrian sent a Roman colony thither, and 



136 DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM, AND 

gave a new name to the city, calling it ^lia Capitolina, a 
name which it retained tiU the reign of Constantine. He 
dedicated it to the heathen gods, and did what he could to 
remove every vestige of Judaism and of Christianity, which 
two religions he always confounded with each other. Had 
not God graciously formed a bulwark about the Christians, 
stronger than the fortress of St. Angelo, as it is now called, 
which Hadrian built at Rome, and which is yet standing, 
the kingdom of God might in his reign have been utterly 
destroyed from the earth. During the twenty-three years' 
reign of Antoninus Pius, A. D. 138-161, the Roman em- 
pire and the church enjoyed peaceful times ; but no sooner 
had his successor, Marcus Aurelius, come to the throne, 
together with his partner in the empire, Lucius Verus, 
than sanguinary wars commenced against those nations 
which bordered upon the north-east frontier, that were the 
harbingers of that long and fatal struggle which was by and 
by brought on by the northern irruptions. Marcus Au- 
relius was a man of much knowledge and experience, and 
his reign was distinguished by a mild and excellent ad- 
ministration. Yet he was only another instance, how little 
the spirit of Greek philosophy, which was his guide in 
everything, was compatible with Christianity. The bloody 
persecutions which befell the infant churches in France, as 
at Lyons and Vienne, A. D. 177, and the oppression of 
the Christians in Asia Minor, where Polycarp, bishop of 
Smyrna, died as a martyr in the flames, A. D. 169, took 
place in the reign of this emperor. 

From that period, the empire began visibly to decline. 
Of all its succeeding rulers, who were mostly chosen by 
the military, and the greater number of whom were either 
tyrants or profligates, Alexander Severus was almost the 
only manly character, A. D. 222-235. Morals had be- 
come excessively corrupt, and abominable vices were 
exhibited without a blush, and in open day. Extreme 
luxury and extreme poverty dwelt as close neighbors ; and 



PERSECUTION OF THE CHRISTIANS. 137 

tke constitution of the state was more and more unsettled 
and distracted, by violence, bribery, and corruption. The 
nations of northern barbarians became every year more 
formidable to the empire : the Marcomanni, the Franks, 
the Caledonians, the Goths, were troublesome upon the 
frontiers, and were no sooner repulsed than they always 
returned in greater numbers. No plan of settling the em- 
pire was carried into effect, because it was so constantly 
changing its governors, no two of whom were successively 
of the same mind ; and yet some such plan was now abso- 
lutely necessary, to hold together an empire of so vast an 
extent. 

The Christians had at this period but few days of quiet ; 
persecution, however, assailed in general only single 
provinces at a time, and it was set on foot partly by the 
respective governors of such provinces, and partly by the 
pagan superstition of the multitude, who were ready enough 
to attribute every national misfortune, and every calamity 
of a province, to the existence of the Christians among 
them. It became more general under the emperor Decius, 
A. D. 249-251, who had determined to restore the ancient 
Roman customs, to raise paganism to new lustre, and utterly 
to extirpate Christianity. He issued a decree to that 
effect as soon as he came to the throne, and thousands died 
the death of martyrs. Heathenism once more rallied all 
its powers, and made the most desperate struggle to crush 
that religion, which, amid all the persecutions it had under- 
gone, only bloomed afresh, and continued to spread itself 
more and more abroad. What could not be effected by 
violence was now attempted by other means. The idolatry 
of the East was united to that of the West ; all manner of 
exterior pomp on the one hand, and every incentive to 
private superstitious observance on the other, were alike 
made use of in accommodation to the most opposite tastes, 
in order to countervail the prevalence of Christianity; 
and to these was added the seduction of a more spiritually 



138 EMPERORS — VESPASIAN TO CONSTANTINE. 

pretending philosophy, that of the New Platonists, which, 
aping the truth, was radically infidel. But though the 
safety of the church was threatened by these temptations 
from without, as also by controversies and divisions 
from within, Christianity had taken too deep root to be 
extirpated, and continued to spread under the succeeding 
emperors ; notwithstanding that several of these, as Vale- 
rian, Dioclesian, and his colleague Maximianus, were ene- 
mies of the Christians. It dwelt, indeed, like Abraham 
and the patriarchs, in tents and in a strange land, and 
gained " no certain dwelling place " on earth till the time 
of Constantine ; but as in the age of the patriarchs there 
was more piety, more spiritual life, and more intimate 
communion with God, than in the subsequent times of the 
people of Israel, and of their temporal prosperity, so was 
this period of pilgrimage and estrangement much more bene- 
ficial to the church of Christ, and to the furtherance of its 
spiritual growth, than the succeeding age, which gave it 
exterior security and advancement. 

v.— THE ROMAN EMPERORS FROM VESPASIAN 
TO CONSTANTINE. 

Still was the fall of the Roman empire arrested from 
time to time by vigorous rulers, who, through successful 
deeds of arms abroad, or by wise policy at home, con- 
trived to add fresh supports to the crazy and tottering 
structure. Aurelian was successful in opposing the in- 
creasingly oppressive invasions of the Alemans and Goths, 
and made himself master of Palmyra, a magnificent city 
founded by Solomon, where Zenobia had roused the jea- 
lousy of this Roman emperor by assuming the title of 
Empress of the East, A. D. 273. Probus had in like 
manner to defend himself against the Goths, Vandals, and 
Burgundi, in Spain and Sicily, Parthia, and Egypt ; and 
to this day are to be seen, in the south-west of Germany, 
the traces of tumuli and roads, which he constructed, and 



CONSTANTINE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 139 

even of towns which he planned and built. Dioclesian 
successfully encountered the Normanni, the Saxons, and 
the Alemanni, in Blyria, and on the banks of the Danube, 
and availed himself of the interval of conquered peace for 
settling and strengthening the interior of the empire. In 
the latter years of his reign, A. D. 303, he set on foot a 
general persecution of his Christian subjects, from which 
those only who resided in France, Spain, and Britain, the 
provinces of Constantius Chlorus, were protected. Con- 
stantine, who was the son of this last-mentioned benevolent 
prince, who died at York, A. D. 306, acquired for himself 
the sole dominion of the whole Roman empire, whereas 
hitherto several Ccesars had reigned at the same time in 
different parts of it. Thus we see, once more, a brief 
revival of the ancient power and glory of the Roman 
empire, which, however, was soon to go down and be no 
more! 



FIFTH PERIOD. 

FROM THE IRRUPTIONS OF THE NORTHERN BARBARIANS 
TO THE AGE OF CHARLEMAGNE. 

A. D. 306 to 798. 

I._CONSTANTINE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 

Whether Constantine was induced to become the 
protector of the Christian church, solely by an impression 
he had of the great power of Christ, or merely by the 
prudent consideration, that Christianity had a great num- 
ber of adherents in the Roman empire, whom he might 
thus gain over to his cause, we are not disposed to deter- 
mine; probably he was influenced by both. With him 
commences the succession of Christian emperors, and, at 
the same time, a new form of administration to the empire 
itself and to the Christian church. Constantine removed 
the seat of government to the ancient city Byzantium, at 



140 CONSTANTINE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 

the entrance to the Black Sea; he rebuilt this city, and 
gave it the name of Constantinople. Christianity, from 
being a persecuted and oppressed religion, was constituted 
by him the dominant religion of the empire ; and the in- 
fluence of the military, which they had hitfierto exercised 
in choosing the emperors and in governing the state, began 
from his time gradually to pass into the hands of the clergy, 
whom he and his son Constantius raised to great temporal 
dignity and power. Thus the Christians, from having hith- 
erto, even in places where they formed the majority of the 
population, been only tolerated at best, and often misrepre- 
sented and abused, according to the humor and opinion of 
the emperor, or of some provincial governor, were now 
everywhere invested with the precedency, while the pagans 
became in their turn oppressed and persecuted. And 
whereas the church assemblies of the Christians had 
hitherto in many places been held in secret and quiet, and 
even their simple oratories, or houses of prayer, had been 
generally constructed of slight materials over the graves 
of their martyrs, their meetings now assumed the imposing 
aspect of public solemnities ; their oratories were converted 
into sumptuous temples, and the heathen temples fell into 
contemj)t and ruin, or were razed to the ground at once. 
Christian mmisters were invested with honor and import- 
ance, and some new arrangements made in their diflferent 
orders and degrees ; public worship was made splendid and 
imposing, and more alluring to the senses. But as the 
rose, in a rich soil, and under the careful nursing of the 
gardener, exhausts all its strength in double flowers, and 
forms no more blossoms into fruit, so it was in a great 
measure with Christianity. The more it tended to unfold 
itself in exterior formalities and coloring, the less power 
and life remained within it ; and whereas, in the wintry 
times of oppression and persecution, its life was ever driven 
back again within itself, it lost, m the season of worldly 
prosperity and security, more and more of its essential 



CONSTANTINE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 141 

qualities, as they were allowed to dwindle into external 
forms. The distinction between reality and appearance, 
life and formality, true and nommal Christians, became 
more and more necessary to be observed ; and the rise of 
the hermit and monastic life is to be regarded as an 
attempt, though not altogether a successful one, to express 
this distinction to the senses. Those Christians who took 
offense at the outward condition of the church, as remain- 
ing not wholly free from mixture of heathenism, and at its 
increasing corruption of morals, withdrew from the midst 
of its worldly din, and desired to serve their God more 
purely in the quietness of solitude, and to redeem the 
precious jewel of faith from temporal defilement. But a 
life of solitude has its temptations no less than a life spent 
in the very midst of the world ; and leaven kept apart in 
the chest can never answer the purpose for which it was 
intended, namely, that of leavening the whole mass of 
mankind. And even though the inhabitants of the cloister 
had not carried with them their own naturally corrupt hearts, 
still it was impossible for them to prevent themselves from 
being invaded by the increasing corruption of the world 
around them; inasmuch as their own numbers had ever 
to be filled up by persons coming to them from such a 
world. The kingdom of God should have been developed 
from within, by the conviction and regeneration of its 
individual members ; its more immediate intent, appoint- 
ment, or constitution, was not for nations or states in the 
gross, but for persons, for human souls ; and it was designed, 
as thus commencing with individuals, to gain the ascendency 
over mankind in no other way than this of degrees, by 
communicating itself from one to another. It was to rule 
in human nature, rather than by any external influence at 
once over a whole mass of men. Instead of which, how- 
ever, from the time of Constantine, it was regarded and 
made use of as a new form of worship, which might be 
imposed upon all nations like the ordinary laws of govern- 



142 CONSTANTINE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 

ment. The heartfelt conviction, the free and unconstrained 
assent and consent of harmonious individuals with respect 
to its fundamental verities, was henceforth less strenuously 
insisted on. Externals took place of the soul's renovation 
and holiness ; and God's great hospital for the spiritually 
sick was converted into a general dwelling-house, into 
which multitudes came to lodge who had not yet become 
conscious of their disease. The renewing power of Christ 
being no longer wholly looked to as the source of all health 
and salvation, and the people wanting patience to be ever 
intent upon the Lord's gradual but effectual deliverance, 
human power and external arrangements were called in 
to help his cause, and depended on ; so that " the old man," 
having clothed itself m a new dress, imagined that all 
things were become new. The word of God was now not 
enough regarded as the only source of all truth and wisdom, 
nor valued as the instrument of all life and renewal ; hea- 
then philosophy was considered as necessary to supply its 
deficiencies ; heathen laws and ordinances were retained ; 
and, above all, the Scripture doctrine of faith became dis- 
figured and adulterated by human additions. Thus it 
came to pass, that Christians never came to understand 
how to recognize fully and entirely the original intent of 
the Scriptures, namely, as having been given by inspiration 
of God for the purpose of regulating, pervading, and sanc- 
tifying all our knowledge, and every relation and concern- 
ment of hfe. Christianity has thus all along remained too 
much mingled with heathenism, and has never been as yet 
generally made use of as the only foundation of the world's 
reform and of human happiness. Between the kingdom 
of God, as it formed itself in the time of the apostles, and 
the heathen world as utterly without Christ, there hence 
arose a third party, namely, the external church. And it 
has been ever since necessary quite as carefully to distin- 
guish from it the communion of true Christians, as not to 
confound the heathen nations with it. 



FURTHER DECLINE OP THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 143 

II.— THE FURTHER DECLINE OF THE ROMAN 
EMPIRE. 

After the death of Constantine, A. D. 337, his empire, 
though continuing still as a whole, was distributed among 
his three sons, of whom Constantius, after the death of his 
two brothers, kept his ground as sole emperor. The do- 
minion which the Christian church had exercised under 
his government was interrupted for a time, namely, during 
the reign of his successor, Julian, A. D. 360-363; for he 
had grown up in the spirit of the Greek philosophy, and 
he hated, or at least despised, Christianity, though he did 
not persecute the Christians. After his short reign, the 
ecclesiastical power rose again. Valentinian and Valens, 
A. D. 364-378, had many conflicts to maintain against 
the irruption of the Germanic nations, the Alemanni, the 
Franks, the Burgundi, and the Saxons ; and it was not till 
the reign of Theodosius, A. D. 378-395, who again united 
the Roman empire under himself as its sole head, that, by 
his exertions and superiority in war, some respite was ob- 
tained from their incursions. But, by the distribution of 
the empire between his two sons, Arcadius and Honorius, 
its weakening and the fall of the ancient Roman glory 
were decided ; for there was now a western empire, with 
Rome for its capital, and an eastern, whose capital was 
Constantinople. From this period, which commences with 
the northern emigrations, the theatre of history is removed ; 
and though the elements of a new universal empire had 
already been formed at Rome, yet this was rather of a 
spiritual than a temporal kind. 

III.— THE IRRUPTIONS OF THE NORTHERN 
BARBARIANS. 

(a.) The Fall of the Roman Empire. 

The Roman people, and the nations under their do- 
minion, had gradually become ripe for overthrow or sub- 



144 IRRUPTIONS OF THE NORTHERN BARBARIANS. 

jugation. Unbounded luxury, united with the light spirit 
of Greek education, had rendered the Romans effeminate 
and feeble ; while gross idolatry, and unbridled sins of 
every kind, had wasted the vital strength of the empire. 
Christianity, with its new enlivening power, had indeed 
come to their relief, but it could evince that power in indi- 
viduals only ; and the spirit of heathenism, that shrunk 
with horror from real regeneration, only made for itself, out 
of Christianity, a new covering, wherein it hoped still 
longer to support itself under another form. In such a 
^rank, exhausted, and weedy soil, the noble plant of the 
gospel could not thrive and grow. That which was newly 
broken up, fresh and vigorous, namely, the soil of bar- 
barous nations, suited it better ; and such a soil it found in 
the Germanic swarms that were encamped on the northern 
frontiers of the vast and overgrown Roman empire, from 
the source to the estuary of the Danube. The face of 
Germany was at that time very different from what it is 
at present : it was overrun with forests and morasses, and, 
therefore, a much colder and less fertile country than it 
now is. Agriculture, in oats and barley, was little attended 
to ; numerous flocks and herds supplied the Germans with 
provisions ; war, with business ; and hunting, with amuse- 
ment and recreation. Might took precedency of right, 
manners were rude, but truth in keeping promises was a 
thing specifically regarded. Gods they had many ; whose 
temples were retired open spaces in the forest, and whose 
names are still remembered in those of our week days. 
The daring and warlike spirit of the tall and robust Ger- 
manic tribes was a terror even to the Romans, who first 
became more particularly acquainted with them when the 
Cimbri and Teutones, B. C. 112, forced their way toward 
Italy, whom, however, Marius subdued. Fifty years after 
this, the Suevi, under Ariovistus, were defeated by Csesar ; 
who did not, however, venture to push further into Ger- 
many itself. The disagreements of the Germanic tribes 



IRRUPTIONS OP THE NORTHERN BARBARIANS. 145 

among themselves were favorable circumstances for the 
Romans, and prevented the defeat of Varus, in the time 
of Augustus, from producing greater advantages. At a 
subsequent period, the Alemans, Franks, and Goths, be- 
came formidable enemies to the empire, and were inces- 
santly attacking it. These Germanic tribes had, from a 
very early period, planted themselves on the banks of the 
Rhine and the Danube, and looked with longing eyes 
across these frontiers upon the beautiful and fruitful coun- 
try of the Romans, of which they watched every oppor- 
tunity to become masters. The Romans kept these hungry 
strangers at bay as long as they were able ; but the in- 
creasing enervation into which they were gradually sinking, 
through luxury and effeminacy, could not escape the notice 
of the Germans, who were thus inspirited more and more 
to prosecute their enterprise. At length an opportunity, 
which they had long waited for, presented itself, of making 
a descent into the warm southern regions. About the 
year A. D. 375 there started up from the high mountain- 
ous country of central Asia, from what occasion is not 
known, a people, whose manner of life and of warfare re- 
sembled most nearly that of the modern Cossacks, only 
they are recorded to have been much more rude and 
inhuman. These were the Huns. At that time there 
dwelt along the North Sea, the Saxons, the Friesi, and the 
Angles ; on the Upper Rhine, the Alemans or Suevi 
(Suabians ;) on the West Danube, the Bavarians ; in 
Hungary, Transylvania, and South Russia, the Ostrogoths 
and Visigoths ; and the Alani, beyond the Don. These 
were carried along by the torrent of the Huns, and poured 
with them into the settlements of the Goths. The Visi- 
goths now sought for themselves new settlements in the 
regions of the eastern empire ; while the Huns, Alans, and 
Ostrogoths shared the vacated country, and quietly retained 
their station there for some time. But the period for 
unmolested encampment and settlement was not yet ar- 

7 



146 IRRUPTIONS OP THE NORTHERN BARBARIANS. 

rived ; and as there had been, for some centuries, a per- 
ceptibly gradual movement and pressing of these nations 
from east to west, and occasionally from north to south, so 
this continued to proceed for a time. The Visigoths, about 
A. D. 380, obtained settlements in Thrace, on condition 
that they should embrace Christianity. Bishop Ulfilas, 
himself a Goth, and who translated the Bible into Gothic, 
successfully labored for their conversion. But their re- 
pose was not of long duration, and their king, Alaric, was 
encouraged by the eastern emperor himself to try his for- 
tune in Italy, where Honorius ruled under the influence 
of a Germanic guardian, the Vandal Stilico, who, in A. D. 
403, defeated the Goths, and drove them back to Pan- 
nonia. Still, having already tasted the sweets of Italy, 
they had set their affections too much upon it not to return 
a second time, and a third time, till at length they con- 
quered and obtained possession of Rome, where, however, 
they spared the Christians, because they themselves had 
already learned to profess Christianity. While Stilico had 
to employ all his energies against the Goths, the frontiers 
of Gaul, as yet a Roman province, where, along the Rhine, 
the cities of Mayence, Treves, Cologne, and others stood, 
were dismantled of troops ; and the Vandals, Alans, and 
Suevi, took occasion from this to overrun Gaul. This 
country had been entered also by the Franks, whence its 
modern name of France. The Franks thronged to the 
north ; but the Vandals, Alans, and Suevi turned toward 
Spain ; yet even here they were again disturbed, when, in 
A. D. 412, the Visigoths abandoned Italy, and pushed 
through France into Spain, where they set up the kingdom 
of the Visigoths, which extended on either side of the 
Pyrenees, and had Toulouse for its capital. They spread 
so far in all directions, that it was only in the north part 
of France that the Franks could keep their ground ; while, 
from the same cause, the Burgundians had to be content 
with the eastern part and with Switzerland ; and the Alans 



IRRUPTIONS OF THE NORTHERN BARBARIANS. 147 

and Suevi, with the west of Spain and with Portugal. But 
the Vandals (Wanderers) were driven out of Spain entirely, 
and passed over into North Africa, where they took pos- 
session of all the region of ancient Carthage. The same 
causes that had opened Gaul to foreign invasions, gave 
likewise occasion to great revolutions in Britain. The 
Roman military were wanted in Italy, and the aborigines 
of the island, the Britons, could no longer stand against 
their less civilized invaders, the Picts and Scots ; hence 
they called over the Anglo-Saxons from Germany to their 
assistance, who drove back the Picts and Scots, but by and 
by expelled the Britons also from theii* native territory, 
in order to possess the whole, which from them is now 
called England, (Angle-land.) The Britons partly took 
refuge in the mountains of Wales, and partly emigrated to 
the northern coast of France, which from them is still called 
Brittany. 

The countless swarms of the Huns had, however, in the 
mean while, if not settled, yet left the West in repose ; 
but now, A. D. 447, they swept like a tempest up the 
Danube, carrying along with them the G^epides, the Heruli, 
and the Ostrogoths, and forced their way across the Ehine 
into France. The Romans, who still possessed one tract 
of province in France, provided the combined hosts of the 
Franks, Visigoths, and Burgundians, v^ith a competent 
leader, named Aetius ; and the Huns, in a bloody contest 
near Chalons, were compelled to retreat, A. D. 451. They 
then turned their course to Italy, plundered and destroyed 
cities and villages, and, after the death of their leader, 
Attila, they became lost to public notice, like a spent 
shower. Rome was at this time also spared, but its entire 
fall was now very near, inasmuch as only lour years after- 
ward Genseric, at the head of his Vandals, came over 
from Africa, and treated Rome as barbarously as the 
Romans had long ago treated Carthage. The western 
emperors wei'e at this period weak and contemptible, and 



3 48 IRRUPTIONS OF THE NORTHERN BARBARIANS. 

not one of them was a match for the stormy invaders of 
his time. The last of them, Eomulus Augustulus, who 
bore the name of the first king, and also, though diminu- 
tively, the name of the first emperor of Rome, did not 
attain the prosperity of either; but was dethroned by 
Odoacer, king of the Heruli, who afterward reigned four- 
teen years as king of Italy. 

Thus ended the great western Roman empire, A. D. 
476, after it had lasted one thousand two hundred and 
thirty years, at the middle of which long period it had at- 
tained its highest degree of power and grandeur, having 
overthrown the Grecian empire, and taken its place as the 
fourth mistress of the world. It is the fourth beast in 
Daniel's vision, and is mentioned by that prophet (Dan. 
vii, 7) as " diverse from all the beasts that were before it ;" 
as it was also the inferior or iron part of the great image 
of Nebuchadnezzar's vision. Dan. ii, ol, etc. Its struggle 
for universal dominion was more evident and avowed, as 
well as more severe and oppressive ; and in it the recog- 
nition of " the God of heaven," which, though in some 
measure acknovrledged by the three preceding empires, 
became in them all along less and less discernible, and was 
eclipsed entirely in the ominous splendor of this fourth 
empire. In luxury and corruption of morals, it surpassed 
all that had been before it: some of its emperors were 
monsters of mankind, and allowed religious sacrifices to be 
offered, not only to themselves, but to their effigies. It 
opposed with rancor and with rigor the introduction of the 
light of Chi'istianity, and put to death immense numbers 
of Christian martyrs. It united in itself all the principal 
features of the preceding empires, all the powers of the 
natural man ; but it surpassed them all in wickedness, and 
in having lost all recognition of the true God ; and when 
at last it began to recover this, it was too late to prevent 
its total overthrow. It had now become partitioned into 
ten kingdoms; the iron of the genuine original Roman 



IRRUPTIONS OF THE NORTHERN BARBARIANS. 149 

character became mingled with the plastic clay of the Ger- 
manic and other northern nations ; a Roman spirit, Ro- 
man laws, and the Roman language, passed into the civil 
constitution, habits, and religion of the Germanic nations, 
and were operative in their formation and development ; 
and though the Roman empire became extinct as to its 
ancient form, yet the idea of universal dominion was still 
propagated in Rome through the Papacy. But as iron and 
clay cannot be mixed so as organically to incorporate, in 
like manner the coherence of what is essentially Roman 
and essentially Germanic was rather mechanical and 
forced than natural. A cause of perpetual disunion ex- 
isted in the very nature of the materials, and manifested 
itself in the incessant contentions between the Germanic 
imperial power and the Papacy ; as also, subsequently, in 
the Reformation. 

(b.) Settlement and Position of the Nations at this Period. 

What was once the ancient Roman empire had now re- 
ceived quite another form. The countries about the Archi- 
pelago and the Black Sea still constituted the eastern 
Roman empire, which subsisted a thousand years longer 
than the western, and had its seat at Constantinople. The 
northern coast of Africa, together with Sardinia and Cor- 
sica, was occupied by the Vandals. In Italy, Odoacer 
ruled a medley of various nations. The Burgundi were 
planted on both sides of the Rhine ; the Alemanni, on the 
Neckar and in the Black Forest, with the Bavarians on 
their right ; the Thuringians had settled northward of the 
Maine ; the Slavonians, on the Oder and the Vistula ; and 
the Friesi and Saxons in the Netherlands. The Franks 
had possessed themselves of the north of France, and the 
Visigoths occupied the south, with part of Spain across the 
Pyrenees. The Suevi inhabited Portugal and the rest of 
Spain. But now the Ostrogoths, who hitherto had kept 
pretty quiet in the north of the Greek-Roman empire, be- 



150 IRRUPTIONS OF THE NORTHERN BARBARIANS. 

gan to move, and at length forced their way, like a torrent, 
into Italy. Odoacer, its king, was beaten in three battles, 
and at last assassinated. Theodoric, (Dieterich,) king of 
the Ostrogoths, hereby became master of Italy, and go- 
verned it with prudence, clemency, and diligence: he en- 
deavored to revive and re-establish the arts and sciences, 
but in vain, for it was a period of barbarism ; but public 
quiet and private security were more effectually established 
by him than they had been for a long time in Italy. 

At the same time Clovis, king of the Franks, extended 
his dominion in several directions. After he had anni- 
hilated the last relics of Roman government in France, he 
compelled the Thuringians to acknowledge his power, and, 
in A. D. 496, he overcame the Alemanni in the battle of 
Zuelpich. Christianity also was at that period introduced 
among the Franks, as it had been earlier received by the 
Visigoths, Ostragoths, Vandals, and Burgundians ; that is, 
too much as a mere form of religion, with which much 
heathen superstition was made compatible. Indeed, among 
the inhabitants of Italy itself, much heathen superstition 
was still to be met with as late as the beginning of the 
sixth century. Clovis likewise put an end to the dominion 
of the Visigoths in France, and raised the Frankish power 
to a height at which it long remained, though it was more 
immediately linked with his own personal valor and pru- 
dence ; for his successors were weak and effeminate men : 
and hence it was that the government, by and by, passed 
from the Merovingian to the Carlovingian dynastv. 

(c.) The Easter7i Empire. 

The eastern or Greek-Roman empire was less affected 
by the violent agitations under which all Europe trembled; 
for, finding itself too weak for warlike resistance, it con- 
trived to keep the hungry nations from its borders by pre- 
sents of money. But the emperor Justinian, A. D. 527- 
565, determined to reunite to his dominions the kingdom 



IRRUPTIONS OF THE NORTHERN BARBARIANS. 151 

of Italy, now in the possession of the Ostrogoths, and sent 
for this purpose his general Belisarius to Carthage, to put 
an end to the Vandal dominion. The Vandal king, Geli- 
mer, was taken prisoner, and his kingdom was converted 
into a Greek province. Belisarius then turned toward 
Italy, A. D. 536, pushed his victorious marches as far as 
Rome, and made himself master of Ravenna, the capital 
of the Goths ; but, in the very flush of triumph, he was 
recalled by the jealousy of the emperor. What he had 
begun was accomplished by Narses, another Greek gene- 
ral, who put an end to the dominion of the Ostrogoths, and 
reduced Italy to a Greek province, A. D. 554. But this 
country was now horribly devastated by incessant warfare ; 
its towns and villages were plundered and destroyed; its 
fields lay bare and uncultivated, and immense numbers of 
its population perished by the sword, by famine, and by 
pestilence. God's rebuking judgments had passed over its 
wanton and luxurious cities in full measure. 

Christendom was torn by unhappy divisions and factions, 
which arose from differences partly in religious opinions 
and partly about church ceremonies ; and the chief seat 
of these controversies was Constantinople itself, where the 
emperor Justinian had trouble enough, amid the perpetual 
feuds which were decided by fire and sword, to keep up 
even a little appearance of order. It is a remarkable cir- 
cumstance, that at the very period when justice was least 
regarded, and disorders of every kind had gained the up- 
per hand, the study of jurisprudence was prosecuted with 
the greatest zeal. Such was the case at Rome during the 
last period of the Roman emperors ; such it was during 
the reign of Justinian, who originated and got completed 
that code of the Roman laws which is called the Justinian 
Code, and which is to this day the foundation of civil law 
in many countries of Europe. In like manner have men 
ever sought remedial help from externals, when spiritual 
life and strength have begun to sink. 



152 IRRUPTIONS OF THE NORTHERN BARBARIANS. 

(d.) The Feudal Systeyn. 

The seat of the kingdom of the Ostrogoths was Verona ; 
the Greek emperor's procurator set it up at Ravenna ; but 
soon another city, Pavia, became the centre of dominion 
over Italy, when the Longobards, or Lombai'ds, another 
Germanic nation, who had turned their course from North 
Germany to the abandoned seats of the Ostrogoths in Pan- 
iionia, afterward gained possession of the former distracted 
and ravaged country. The eastern coasts of Middle Italy, 
with Rome and the greatest portion of Lower Italy, still 
remained indeed under Greek pre-eminence ; but all the 
rest was obtained and possessed by the Lombards, whose 
kingdom continued for two centuries, and whose dominion 
is still remembered in Upper Italy, which retains the name 
of Lombardy. They mtroduced into Italy the feudal sys- 
tem, which had taken root in the whole expanse of Ger- 
manic national government, and the branches of which we 
find extending through the whole history of the middle 
ages. Each Germanic nation was composed of freemen 
and bondmen, and the freemen were again divided into 
nobles and serving men. The nobles were the more rich 
and powerful ; the serving men willingly adhered to them, 
and were their ready followers in war. When a country 
was conquered, the victors distributed it among themselves ; 
and the chief also, who, by the greatest number of his fol- 
lowers and retainers, had most contributed to the conquest, 
obtained the largest share of the conquered lands ; but the 
noble, who had but few or no serving men, was as independ- 
ent upon his own little estate as any of the greater chiefs. 
The rich nobles made over a portion of their large posses- 
sions to each of their free serving men, to be enjoyed by 
the latter as long as they continued in the service of the 
former: these possessions were called fiefs; those who 
conferred them were styled lords of fief, or feudal lords ; 
and the receivers of them were called fiefmen, feudals, or 



IRRUPTIONS OF THE NORTHERN BARBARIANS. 153 

vassals. But the cultivation of such estates was the busi- 
ness of the third class, called bondmen, villains, or serfs, 
who were made over to the possessor with the lands as 
attacMs to the soil, and who consisted chiefly of the origi- 
nal and conquered inhabitants of the country. Whenever 
war arose, the king proclaimed the arrierehan : and every 
freeman was then obliged to appear at the head of his 
vassals. The bondmen were governed with rigor, and no 
better accounted of than the dogs and horses. Wherever 
mere valor is regarded as the only virtue, and war as the 
only business, human feeUngs become blunted, morals are 
at a low ebb, and manners are rude and cruel. Society 
had no middle class, but consisted of fierce lords and abject 
slaves ; neither the one nor the other according with the 
spirit of Christianity ; and, indeed, the Christianity of that 
time was, among those nations, little more than a set of 
unmeaning ceremonies, mixed up with solemnities which 
were not understood by the people in general ; and the 
real import of which was strange to them, just in the same 
proportion as the Holy Scriptures were to them a sealed 
book. The clergy had degenerated into semi-barbarism ; 
establishments for instruction there were none throughout 
the West, and the public worship was generally in Latin, 
that is, in an unknown tongue. Laxity of morals increased 
in proportion as the idea became diffused everywhere, that 
external penance, and gifts to churches and monasteries, 
could make amends for the guilt of sin. The bishop of 
Rome, after frequent embroihng contests with the bishop 
of Constantinople about supremacy, had at length brought 
it to pass, that he was acknowledged as the first bishop in 
Christendom ; and he carried on his endeavors to enlarge 
his influence and dominion, by using the utmost diligence 
for the conversion of the heathenish nations, in which re- 
spects his selfish zeal could not fail of producing some good 
effects. 

7* 



154 IBRUPTIONS OF THE NORTHERN BARBARIANS. 

(e.) Chrhtianlty among the Germanic Nations. 

Christianity had at an early period been propagated in 
England, and had spread very considerably in the reign of 
Constantius Chlonis, and that of his son Constantine the 
Great ; it had likewise found its way to Ireland, by the 
preaching of Patricius, (St. Patrick.) But when the 
heathen tribes of the Anglo-Saxons became possessors of 
England, its Christianity was driven into the mountains of 
Wales, and the conversion of those tribes gave the church 
new work, in which Bishop Gregory the Great, of Rome, 
took a deep interest. In the year 596, Ethelred, the 
most powerful of the Saxon heptarchy, received baptism ; 
after which the conversion of the people at large proceeded 
more rapidly. Even before this time had Christian preach- 
ers come over from Ireland to Germany, where in quiet- 
ness and simplicity they had begun the work of conversion 
among its pagan inhabitants. Of the number of such 
preachers w^ere Fridolin among the Alemanns in the 
Upper Rhine, and Gall and Columban near the Lake of 
Constance, and the latter also among the Lombards ; to 
these were afterward added Kilian in Franconia, Willi- 
brord among the Friselanders, and Winfried (Bonifacius) 
among various Germanic tribes. Still later were also the 
Slavonians in the north-east of Germany, and the Nor- 
mans in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, brought by 
Ansgarius and others to profess Christianity. Most of 
this was indeed nothing but outward form, mixed up with 
much ignorance and superstition ; nevertheless a beginning 
was thus made toward uprooting i\\Q horrible idolatry which 
hitherto had full sw\ay among the heathen Germans, and 
for extending the protection of the external church to those 
who really wished to serve God from the heart. 

France was, after the death of Ciovis, partitioned into three 
kingdoms — Neustria, Austrasia, and Burgundy. These 
were perpetually at war with one another, and moreover 



THE EASTERN CHURCH. 155 

disquieted by unhappy broils between the reigning famiUes. 
Pepin of Heristal, who w^as mayor of the palace, or prime 
minister of the Frankish government, taking advantage of 
these circumstances, especially as the princes were all of 
them weak and profligate characters, got the whole power 
of government into his hands, A. D. 687, and made his 
dignity hereditary in his family. He conquered the Ale- 
manns and Bavarians, and made the Friselanders his 
tributaries. Equally powerful was his son Charles Mar- 
tell ; and his grandson Pepin le Bref contrived, Avith the 
assistance of the bishop of Rome, who already possessed 
great political influence, to dethrone Childeric, the last of 
the Merovingian dynasty, and to get into his own hands the 
sole srovernment of France. His son was Charlemao;ne. 



IV.— THE ExiSTERN CHURCH. 

Immediately after the death of Justinian, the eastern 
empire fell away into great weakness ; it was oppressed 
on one side by the Persians, on another by the Avarians 
of the Lovrer Danube, and was obliged, in the year GIG, 
to cede even to Persia the whole of Syria, Avith Jerusalem, 
Alexandria, Carthage, and a part of Lesser Asia. Never- 
theless, the emperor Heraclius, in the year 622, marched 
victoriously through Ai'menia and Syria, and in 628 he 
again set up the cross in Jerusalem ; on which account the 
Roman Catholics to the present time keep their annual 
feast of the erection of the cross, on the 14th of September. 
But the triumph was short ; for the rebuke of divine judg- 
ments, which had been appointed for the eastern church, 
Avas novv^ at the door. Petty but vehement controversies, 
upon various points of doctrine and notions of faith, had 
rent this church for more than two centuries, and by its 
intimate connection with the state, it shared in all those 
disgraceful deeds wdiich were perpetrated without bounds 
under the ofovernmont of wenk. intriGcuinsr. nnd arbitrarv 



156 MOHAMMEDANISM. 

monarclis ; indeed a great part of such evils proceeded 
from the church itself. Luxury, effeminacy, and riotous 
living, insurrection, and murder, prevailed and ruled, not 
only in Constantinople, but also in the other great cities of 
the empire; as, for instance, in iUexandria: image or 
picture worship had already become very extensively 
prevalent. In a word, if we read the description of the 
abominations which reigned in the eastern empire at this 
period, we no longer wonder that God suffered one part of 
it to perish for a warning to the other part, but are sur- 
prised that his patience could permit that other part to 
continue so long, especially when the warning was without 
effect. 

v.— MOHAMMEDANISM. 

Arabia, the native country of the impostor Mohammed, 
who founded a new religion of empire, was peopled prin- 
cipally by the posterity of Ishmael and the descendants of 
Joktan, Genesis x, 25, 26 ; xxv, 2 ; the latter chiefly as a 
settled mercantile people in towns and ports of the Red 
Sea and the Persian Gulf; the former as wandering Be- 
doweens, who supported themselves by pasturage, hunting, 
and plunder, and led a nomadic life in the wilds of Ara- 
bia Petrtea, as a nation that had never been conquered. 
Mohammed was born at Mecca, near the Red Sea, about 
the year 570, was brought up as a merchant, and, by long 
journeys of traffic to foreign countries, and having a con- 
templative mind, he acquired a variety of knowledge and 
experience. He was acquainted with the Jewish and the 
Christian religions ; for he not only came in contact witli 
Jews and Christians abroad, but must have met with not a 
few of them in Arabia itself. He was satisfied, however, 
with neither of these religions; either because he had 
become acquainted with Christianity in only its outward 
forms, which forms were at that time already very much 
disiigured; or, which is more probable, because it was 



MOHAMMEDANISM. 157 

more congenial to the pride of his heart to become the 
founder of a new religion, than to submit to the doctrine 
of Christ. That he was acquainted with the Scriptures 
of the Old and New Testament is evident from the book 
of his religion, the Koran, which he began to publish in 
the same year that Heraclius again set up the cross at 
Jerusalem. The best parts of his book, the moral pre- 
cepts, he borrowed with some alterations from the sacred 
writings. His grand maxim is, " There is but one God, 
and Mohanuned is his prophet." By this he does not 
mean to deny that Moses and Christ were also sent of 
God, but he regards them as merely making a preparation, 
which, without the completion introduced by himself, was 
insufficient. Thus he sets his doctrine in the same relation 
to Christianity which Christianity bears to Judaism. He 
accommodated the knowledge of the better sort with the 
doctrine of one God, he flattered the sensuality of his 
adherents with the promises of a carnal paradise, he trained 
their dispositions to cool-headed soberness, by prohibiting 
wine, and by other ordinances and religious rights, and 
taught contempt of death by his doctrine concerning unal- 
terable fatality. Also the deep apostasy of the eastern 
churches, and the military violence with which he advanced 
the imposture, must be duly considered. In viewing the 
amazingly rapid spread of Mohammedanism, we must also 
take into account the influence of the invisible power of 
darkness; for to this the Holy Scriptures themselves 
direct our attention. 

As Mohammed's new doctrine at the outset found no 
reception among his fellow-citizens at Mecca, even those 
of his own tribe and family becoming his persecutors on 
its account, he thought it expedient to try his schemes in 
another city, and therefore fled to Medina, the same year 
that the Greek emperor Heraclius rose up to reconquer 
from the Persians the lost provinces of his empire, A. D. 
622. From this flight his followers have ever since dated 



158 MOHAMMEDANISM. 

their chronological reckoning. Mohammed found many 
adherents at Medina, gathered troops, and by force of arms 
took Mecca and subdued all Arabia. He died in 630, 
after he had raised up many disciples of his new religion, 
who called themselves Moslemin, or believers, whence the 
name of Mussulmans. After Mohammed's death, Abube- 
ker was chosen caliph, or successor of the prophet, and 
united in his own person both political and spiritual power. 
He conquered the Arabian kingdom of Hira toward the 
Euphrates, and the kingdom of the Cassanides south-east 
of Damascus. The caliph Omar was still more successful 
in his conquests : he subjected to his yoke all Syria and 
Phenicia, Persia, Egypt, and the north coast of Africa. 
After his death, which was by assassmation, the caliphs 
pushed their conquests further eastward, took the islands 
of Cyprus and Rhodes, subdued Armenia, and, notwith- 
standing their intestine dissensions, they overran the Greek 
islands as far as before Constantinople, and extended their 
dominion in North Africa to the shores of the Atlantic. 
While the Greek empire was threatened with utter ex- 
tinction by this new enemy, against Avhom il; held out only 
by its excellent naval armament, it had also to v/ithstand 
hostile invasions from the north by the Avarians, (Hun- 
garians,) the Bulgarians, and Chazarians. At this period 
the Slavonian tribes established their independence in 
Bohemia, Moravia, Servia, Bosnia, Slavonia, Dalmatia, 
and Croatia; wliereas hitherto they had been partially 
under the influence of the Greek empire. The emperor 
Leo HI., the Isaurian, made a stand against the Arabians 
by his valor ; but a new danger threatened his empire, by 
reason of their attempting to advance from the west of 
Europe, and to attack Constantinople by land. In the 
reign of the caliph Omar, four thousand Christian churches 
in the conquered countries had been destroyed. The 
whole coast of North Africa, which had contained many 
Christian churches, was in this respect laid in ruins ; and 



MOHAMMEDANISM. 159 

the churches of the West were now menaced with the 
heavy Mohammedan yoke. The Arabians crossed the 
Straits of Gibraltar into Spain. The kingdom of the Visi- 
goths had subsisted there till now, and had kept under 
their yoke the Suevi in Portugal, but its safety had be- 
come undermined through the feudal system, which had 
now forced its way even into the government of the church. 
For discontented vassals offered their hand to the Ara- 
bians, and these invaded the Visigoths with a great army. 
A battle which continued eight days left the Arabians 
masters of the field. The whole of Spain, except its inac- 
cessible mountainous regions, fell into their hands; and 
thus inspirited, they pushed across the Pyrenees into the 
south of France, destroyed everything in the way of their 
march, and put the Christians in great terror. Charles 
Martell, the high steward of France, was called to resist 
these foes, and a decisive battle took place near Poitiers, 
A. D. 732. The Arabians were commanded by the valiant 
warrior Abderrahman ; and his hitherto victorious forces, 
amounting to four hundred thousand, who rushed to battle 
with enthusiastic contempt of death, would undoubtedly 
have been victorious on this occasion also, as they had 
been over the heroic Visigoths, if God had not said, 
"Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further. And here 
shall thy proud weaves be stayed !" Charles Martell's vic- 
tory was complete ; and Abderrahman, after losing the 
greatest part of his army, was obliged to retreat into Spain. 
There, however, he formed for himself from this time an 
Arabian kingdom, wiiich was not forced entirely to yield 
to Christianity till seven hundred years afterward. Chris- 
tianity, notwithstanding its corruption in the East, and its 
barbarous condition in the West, contained in it, as the 
salt of the earth, an inward power, by which Christendom 
in those days was saved from being entirely overpowered 
by Mohammedanism. 



160 EXTERNAL AND SPIRITUAL 

VL— EXTERNAL AND SPIRITUAL STATE OF THE 
NATIONS AT THE CLOSE OF THIS PERIOD. 

How totally different a form had those nations which 
make up the subject of history assumed since the com- 
mencement of the period now under consideration ! The 
great Roman empire, which at that time subsisted in its 
wide extent, though its strength was gone, and which had 
so long comprised within itself the whole dominion of the 
more cultivated part of mankind, had now disappeared 
from the theatre of the world ; and its last branch, the 
Greek empire, was almost wholly confined to Greece itself 
and to Asia Minor. The scene of history was shifted from 
Rome, where the countries about the Mediterranean had 
formed its boundaries, into the narrower circle of the Ger- 
manic nations, which gradually became the focus of civili- 
zation, culture, and novel ecclesiastical regimen. In the 
countries where the church of Christ had once her most 
flourishing fields of labor, all her glory was now annihi- 
lated by the sudden and rapidly comprehensive grasj) of a 
new false religion ; and the crescent took the place of the 
cross. Hitherto had history always but one ostensible 
middle point about which the whole turned, even the whole 
power of the world ; but now two independent and oppo- 
site powers appeared; a power professedly Christian in 
the West, and a Mohammedan one in the East ; and these 
in the following period were almost always in conflict with 
each other. Nations, which hitherto had lain beyond the 
circle of history, were now drawn within its vortex, and 
almost entirely composed its material, namelj^, the Ger- 
manic nations in the AYest, and the Arabian nations in the 
East. The history of the Avorld now resembled a pair of 
balances, in one scale of which lay Christianity, and in the 
other Mohammedanism ; the one rising, and the other 
sinking. 

Again, as in the East there was a special mutual rela- 



STATE OF THE NATIONS. 161 

tion between the empire of the caliphs and the Greek em- 
pire, so was there to be perceived in the "West the contra- 
riety between the temporal and the spiritual power ; and 
as the empire of the caliphs oscillated between the oppo- 
site parties, the Ommiades and the Abassides, so likewise 
did the temporal power in the West exhibit a scene of in- 
testine ruptm-e and disunion. Moreover this new world, 
in wliich the form of Christianity has all along occupied 
the ascendent station, never yet came to understand that 
true greatness is a thing which begins with the state of the 
mind and heart; that the success and welfare of nations 
must begin from within, and are of a spiritual origin. In- 
stead of this, nominal Christians have sought, and still 
seek, the very same things which they had ever sought in 
their heathen profession, though under another form, 
namely, exterior enlargement, the delights of sense, and 
the display of temporal grandeur. Indeed they have ever 
sought to mix up these things with Christianity ; and have 
still to learn that the glory of the flesh certainly cannot 
save us, because it contains within itself the seeds of cor- 
ruption and dissolution. Yet for many centuries they 
evinced, no less than the heathen world, a disposition to 
struggle for empire, and for concentrating all temporal 
power in one point: but the thing can never succeed; "it 
shall not prosper;" the elements of discord and division 
are interwoven in its very nature. 

Even the civil arrangements of the world, at the time 
we are now contemplating, tended to produce such an 
effect. The prince distributed his lands among his vas- 
sals, the king his among the dukes, and the dukes theirs 
among the earls. This was an arrangement suited to 
establish and to enlarge power and empire ; and it often 
happened that the fee, which had been granted only at the 
time of serving at court or in war, w^as made hereditary ; 
and particularly whenever the landlord himself happened 
to be a weak character. Even civil and ecclesiastical 



162 STATE OF THE NATIONS. 

offices became hereditary fiefs ; and this served to beget a 
mean and selfish dependence on the part of state ministers, 
as well as ignorance and immorality in the clergy. The 
administration of justice also was based upon a weak 
foundation, for punishments were awarded according to 
the rank of the complainant. Thus the murder of a prince, 
an earl, or an ecclesiastic, was more severely punished 
than the murder of a vassal or humbler serf; and in many 
cases it was deemed necessary to prove the guilt of the 
accused by the trial of the ordeal of fire, water, etc., which 
was foolishly regarded as an appeal to " the judgment of 
God." 

The bishop of Rome, having hitherto contended against 
the Greek patriarchs for the supremacy, against the Greek 
emperors for independence, and against the princes of Ger- 
manic descent, as, for instance, against the king of the 
Visigoths, for the casting voice in all ecclesiastical matters, 
had become at the close of this period almost universally 
acknowledged as the supreme head of the western church. 
The appointment of the Germanic princes, which seems to 
have been expressly ordained by Providence to counteract 
his ever-growing influence, had not yet manifested itself; 
but the struggle of his power to spread itself into universal 
empire, and to continue playing on, in a spiritual garb, the 
part of the Roman empire which had now fallen into de- 
cay, had begun to be discovered in a variety of instances ; 
a struggle which m the following age was most decidedly 
put forth in all directions. The bishop of Rome had ex- 
tended his influence in the West as far as Britain. The 
gospel had been early introduced into that island, probably 
in the first century, and seems to have been more pure 
where it was professed, than after the arrival of the monk 
Augustin, A. D. 597, brought the pope's authority into 
England — a nation, which, in after ages, was to be the 
firmest and most determined of the opponents to false 
doctrines and domination of the Papacy. 



ACCOUNT OF THE CARLO VINGIAN DYNASTY. 163 

SIXTH PERIOD. 

FROM CHARLEMAGNE TO THE REFORMATION. 
A. D. 768 to 1517. 

I.— ACCOUNT OF THE CARLOVINGIAN DYNASTY. 

When Charlemagne,* in the year 768, ascended the 
throne of the Franks, there were as yet no indications that 
the countries under his sway would one day become the 
seats of liberal education. He himself had never been 
taught even to write, and had to learn it in after life. His 
reign consisted of an uninterrupted succession of wars, and 
may be regarded, if not as a designed, yet a pretty suc- 
cessful attempt to unite all nations of the Germanic tongue 
under one autocrat, which had at least this beneficial effect, 
that the hitherto continual feuds among the German tribes 
were allayed for a season. His first war, which was also 
the longest, was against the Saxons, A. D. 772-803, the 
east-bordering neighbors of the Franks, and with whom 
his father had been troubled. In the first campaign he 
pushed his victorious march to the banks of the Weser, 
and destroyed on his way a heathen temple : for he under- 
took, at the same time, to bring over the Saxons to Chris- 
tianity ; because he thought, that they could become inured 
to peace and civilization by no other means. Having con- 
cluded a peace, and received promises from the Saxons, he 
was, in the following year, invited by the bishop of Rome 
to assist him against the Lombards, who had invaded the 
ten-itory of the latter. The city of Rome, with its ex- 
archate, (or neighboring territory,) had, since Justinian's 
time, been nominally at least a part of the Greek Roman 
empire ; but Pepin le Bref, wiio had the real power of it, 
presented to the Roman bishop that city, and also Ravenna, 

* Signifying Charles the Groat. 



164 ACCOUNT OF THE CARLOVINGIAN DYNASTY. 

with their respective territories, out of gratitude for the 
support he had received from him in his election to the 
throne ; and thus the pope became an independent tem- 
poral prince, A. D. 756. For though the Frankish king 
remained his feudal lord, yet this was a relation as to which 
there might be many changes through circumstances or 
design. Pepin, at the same time, humbled the Lombards ; 
and their king, Desiderius, acted very imprudently in pro- 
voking against himself the powerful Charles, for it led to 
the loss of his throne, after vrhich he retired into a convent, 
and his kingdom became a part of that of the Franks. 
This was the occasion of Charles's first visit to Rome, 
where he confirmed the grant of Pepin to the bishop, and 
was honored by him with the title of Protector of the 
Roman Church. Fresh inroads from the Saxons recalled 
him to his own immediate territory, lie chastised them ; 
they sued for peace ; but broke it again that same year. 
In 778 Charles marched into Spain, to the assistance of 
an Arab prince, and then extended his own territory to the 
banks of the Ebro. He had again to contend with the 
Saxons upon his return, and as they immediately after this 
invaded his country a second time, his wrath against them 
overstepped the usual bounds, and he caused four thou- 
sand five hundred Saxons to be beheaded at once. Thus, 
as the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of 
God, so it does not even stay to consider w^hat is wise and 
prudent in the sight of men. The Saxons were enraged 
beyond measure, and from this time defended themselves 
with desperation. Nevertheless, Charles, by the year 785, 
so prevailed over them, that their redoubted leader, Wit- 
tekind, came of his own accord into his presence, and 
allowed himself to be baptized ; and his influential exam- 
ple was followed by many others of the Saxon nation. In 
succeeding years, Charles was absent in Italy, Bavaria, 
and Brandenburg, contending against the Wilzians ; and 
in Hungary, against the Avari. New insurrections of the 



ACCOUNT OF THE CARLOVINGIAN DYNASTY. 165 

Saxons were the consequence. In the year 800 he was 
proclaimed, at Rome, western emperor, or emperor of the 
Romans : and this dignity, which had been extinct for 
more than three centuries, and certainly was become 
merely titular, was uniformly handed down, such as it was, 
to his successors. What would a real C<Tsar have thought, 
could he, upon looking, in his own times, into the horrible 
wilds of Germany, have been addressed as follows : " Lo, 
the princes of these savage nations of the forest will one 
day be thy successors, and here, as from their head- 
quarters, will they give law to proud and magnificent 
Rome !" In the year 803 Charles succeeded in pacifi- 
cating the Saxons, and introducing Christianity into their 
whole nation. He established episcopal sees and fortresses 
throughout their country, and the latter grew to towns 
and cities ; such were Hamburgh, Magdeburg, Halle, 
Halberstadt, Hildesheim, Bremen, Verden, Paderborn, 
Osnabruck, and Muenster. But, for security from further 
disturbances, he transplanted a portion of this people to 
France, in the same manner as the Jews were transplanted 
to Assyria, Babylon, and Egypt. Charles had yet, in his 
latter years, to struggle with the Danes, and succeeded in 
making the Eider the settled northern boundary of his 
empire. Thus it extended from the Ebro in Spain to the 
Raab in Hungary, and from the North and East Sea to the 
Roman Tiber. 

Of many a similarly successful conqueror it can only be 
said, that he was in body and soul a warrior, and cared for 
nothing besides. But this cannot be correctly said of 
Charlemagne. He was also in peace a wise and firm 
governor, a kind father to his household, a zealous friend 
of the church, and a patron of science. His favorite resi- 
dence cities were Aix la Chapelle, Nymwegen, and Ingel- 
heim, near Mayence ; and these very stations serve to re- 
mind us, that he was as much lord of France as he was of 
Germany. Very highly did he value learned men, of 



166 ACCOUNT OF THE CARLOVINGIAN DYNASTY. 

whom there were at that period so few ; as Alcuin of 
England, and Eginhard : he invited and drew them to his 
court, and was himself a hearer of the instruction which 
he induced them to give to his children and others. The 
church singing of the Franks, which to Italian ears seemed 
as rough as the jarring of carriage wheels, he amended by- 
means of organs and precentors introduced from Italy. 
But the churches and clergy required more reform and 
amendment still. The latter had now so forgotten the 
sacredness of their character, that he further found it neces- 
sary to forbid their committing acts of violence, and their 
engaging in unbecoming diversions, as that of the chase, 
for instance ; and he corrected ungrammatical faults in 
their letters with as much care as immoral faults in their 
lives. As they were for the most part very ignorant, he 
appointed a selection of good sermons from the Greek and 
Latin fathers, to be read by them from the pulpit, for the 
benefit of the people at large. Charles, moreover, did 
what he could toward promoting the fixing and cultivation 
of the Germanic language, as also for insuring the proper 
care of the sick and poor, and for the encouragement of 
industry in architecture, husbandry, trade, and manufac- 
tures. He had a kind of personal piety; he humbled 
himself in the daily worship of God, and certainly intended 
well to the church of Christ, as far as his defective know- 
ledge permitted. He was, in many respects, superior to 
the age he lived in ; though, in many others, he partook 
of its rude ideas, which was in some degree owing to his 
numerous wars. The violent manner and measures he 
adopted for imposing the profession of Christianity upon 
the Saxons we are ready enough to excuse, when we con- 
sider the ignorance of the times ; but this very conduct of 
his well-intentioned zeal at once bespeaks what iron times 
they were, together with the ignorant and even semi- 
barbarous state of the visible church. The contrariety of 
Christianity to heathenism, the latter depending upon 



ACCOUNT OF THE CARLOVINGIAN DYNASTY. 167 

mere externals, was now almost entirely forgotten ; and 
Christianity itself was in general reduced to an outward 
form, which often showed itself to be very little better than 
a species of idolatry. For though image worship, which 
had occasioned so many disturbances in Constantinople 
under Leo III., and had been sanctioned by the Roman 
pontiif, was condemned at a synod convened by Charle- 
magne, still so many heathen superstitions had found their 
way into the German church, that the pagans would have 
gained but little by the exchange, were it not that every 
professed Christian has the privilege of consulting the word 
of God, of which the church is the depository. And though 
this was a sealed book to the generality, it remained among 
them ; and if one generation could not profit by it, another 
could. Heathenism could furnish nothing like it. 

Charles died in 814, and was interred at Aix la Cha- 
pelle. The remains of his castle at Nimwegen are still to 
be seen as a beautiful ruin. His main service to the 
Christian church consisted not in his having extended its 
boundaries by tlie sword, but in his care for the education 
of the clergy and lay teachers, his erection of institutions 
for that purpose, and in his munificent establishment of 
seminaries expressly for the general improvement of his 
subjects throughout the empire. Hence originated the 
schools attached to the cathedrals and monasteries at Paris, 
Tours, Lyons, Orleans, liheims, Fulda, Corvey, Hirschau, 
likewise at Reichenau, (v/hich had been a seat of learning 
ever since the time of Clovis,) and lastly at St. Gall. 
These seminaries diffused, for several succeeding centuries, 
considerable light through the surrounding darkness in 
their respective vicinhies. 

Meanwhile, in the eastern world, the empire of the ca- 
liphs had at length become subjected to the dynasty of the 
Abassidse, and Al Manzour, the second caliph of this race, 
had transplanted their seat to Bagdad, near the ruins of 
old Babylon, A. D. 762. The most flourishing period of 



168 ACCOUNT OF THE CAKLOVINGIAN DYNASTT. 

the caliphs was under this dynasty, and especially at the 
time when the empire of the Franks, under Chai'lemagne, 
was at the height of its power. His contemporary was the 
caliph Haroun al Raschid, A. D. 786-808, a name which 
to this day is as famous in the East as that of Charlemagne 
in the West. He, on several occasions, sent embassies to 
Charles, whose great renown had reached him, and whom 
he regarded in some measure as his ally, because Charles 
had carried on war in Spain against the preceding caliph 
dynasty of the race of Omar. The arts and sciences at- 
tained under his government a high degree of cultivation ; 
and the Arabians, at this period, excelled the nations of 
the West in chemistry, astronomy, medicine, geometry, 
poetry, architecture, and other acquirements. The pre- 
dominance of the Mohammedan religion was also extended 
very far into the East. But though Al Mamoun, the son 
of Al Raschid, was Ukewise a distinguished ruler, and a 
great encourager of learning, yet from his time the power 
and glory of the Saracens began to decline, even as did 
those of the empire of the Franks after the age of Charle- 
magne. 

As in the Babylonian empire after Nebuchadnezzar's 
death, and in the Grasco-Persian after the death of Alex- 
ander, and in the kingdom of Israel after the glorious age 
of Solomon, weakness, division, and disorder immediately 
succeeded ; so did they after the strong-armed government 
of Charlemagne. His son Lewis, (le debonnaire,) who 
succeeded him in the empire, was a kind-hearted, well- 
meaning prince, and exerted himself for the extension and 
safe establishment of the Christian church ; but neither in 
his own household, nor in his vast empire, did he evince 
the firm and manly spirit of his father. He showed him- 
self ready to indemnify every one who had been treated 
with any injustice under his father's government ; but he 
himself committed one of the greatest acts of political in- 
justice against the nations under his sceptre. He had not 



ACCOUNT OF THE CARLOVINGIAN DYNASTY. 1G9 

reigned three years before lie consented to a partition of 
his dominions among his three sons, Lotharius, Pepin, and 
Lewis the German ; and thus furnished occasion for mise- 
rable distractions in the empire. He also assigned some 
provinces to a fourth son, Charles the Bald, who was the 
child of his second marriage. His sons were soon found 
in hostility against their father ; they deprived him of his 
power ; imd, with the assistance of the clergy, who had 
then become very powerful, made him contemptible to all 
the people ; and though royal authority was restored to 
him, yet as he was now too weak and worn out to proceed 
against such children with fatherly severity, their rebellions 
and mutual contentions still continued, till at length, weary 
of life, and of a government full of the most painful and 
humiliating events, he ended his days, in the year 840.* 
Could the blessing of God attend such sons as these ? Im- 
mediately after the death of theu' father they renewed 
their wars with one another, and Lotharius was totally 

* We supply, chiefly from Tytler, the following more particular 
summary of these transactions : — To Pepiu, his second son, he gave 
Aquitaine, the southern third of France ; to Lewis, suniamed the 
German, who was youngest, Bavaria; and he associated his eldest 
son Lotharius with himself in the government of the rest. The 
three princes quai-reled among themselves, agreeing in nothing but 
in hostility against their father, who thus proved the unintentional 
author of most serious civil troubles. They made open war against 
him, supported by Pope Gregory IV. ; the pretence was, that the 
emperor having a younger son, Charles, born to him by a second 
wife, and after this partition of the states wanted to provide this 
claild likewise with a share, which could not be done but at the ex- 
pense of his elder brothers. Lewis was compelled to surrender 
himself a prisoner to his rebellious children. They confined him 
for a year to a monastery, and treated him with great contempt; till, 
on a new quarrel between Lewis the younger and Pepin, Lotharins 
once more restored his father to the throne. But his spirits were 
broken, and his health decayed, so as to disable him from exercising 
any paternal severity or royal firmness ; thus the rebellions and dis- 
sensions of the brothers still continued, and he finished, soon after, 
by his death, an inglorious and turbulent reign, A. D. 840. — Trans. 
8 



170 ACCOUNT OF THE CARLOVINGIAN DYNASTT. 

defeated at the battle of Fontenay, in France. However, 
in the year 843, a new partition of the empire was made 
by the treaty of Verdun. Lotharius retained the imperial 
dignity, the possession of Italy, and a tract of country on 
the left bank of the Rhine, stretching to the coast of the 
North Sea. The province of Lothringen (Lorraine) was 
so called from his name. But his family became extinct a 
few years after his death, and his territory, with the im- 
perial dignity, came into the hands of Charles the Bald, to 
whom France, and a portion of Spain extending to the 
Ebro, had been assigned in the above-mentioned partition 
of the empire. But this prince was unable to defend his 
territory against the invasions of the Normans, who poured 
in upon it from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden ; and who, 
upon their arrival, gave immediate independence to several 
powerful vassals of the emperor, and established new king- 
doms in Lower Burgundy, (the south-east part of France,) 
and in Upper Burgundy, (France, east and west of Mount 
Jura, including Switzerland ;) while another part of them 
settled in the north-west part of France, which is still 
called Normandy. His successors, Lewis the Stammerer, 
Charles the Gross, Charles the Simple, and Lewis the 
Lazy, were weak princes. The last had at length no 
more than the territories of two cities remaining to him ; 
and, upon his death, in 987, Hugh Capet, count of Paris, 
the father of the Capetian race of monarchs, established 
himself on tlie throne, and from him are descended the 
present royal families of France. 

In Germany, the Carlovingian line had even earlier 
become extinct. At the above-mentioned partition of the 
empire, the best part of Germany had fallen to the share 
of Lewis the German. But he and his successors had to 
encounter perpetual incursions from the Hungarians, Sla- 
vonians, Moravians, and Normans ; and the last of his 
line, namely, Lewis, surnamed the Child, died in A. D. 
911. The incessant invasions from these foreigners occa- 



ACCOUNT OF THE CARLOVINGIAN DYNASTY. 171 

sioned the erection of innumerable fortresses and castles, 
many ruins of which to this day still hang about the hills 
and heights of Germany. The original tenants of these 
once fortified places bade defiance not only to the invading 
foe, but sometimes even to the power of their own lawful 
sovereign. The evil of the Germanic feudal system had 
been all along more and more discovering itself in dissen- 
sions, internal weakness, lawlessness, and anarchy; and 
the chasm between the haughty nobles and the oppressed 
vassals, as having no industrious and educated middle 
class to fill it up, became more and more observable. It 
was in Italy that the struggle was first made to remedy 
this evil. In that country, during the feeble government 
of the Carlovingians, several powerful vassals rebelled, 
and contended for the independent possession of their 
lands; while the poor people at large groaned under their 
oppression, as also under that of the clergy. As in Ger- 
many, castles and fortresses were multiplied for protection 
against foreign invaders, so in Italy, for the same object, 
large towns were newly built, while others were enlarged 
and fortified. Extended traffic produced affluence, and 
affluence, with the living together of large bodies of people, 
called forth new wants and desires. Hence arts and 
manufactures ])egan to flourish. And although in these 
free towns there was a partition-wall between nobility and 
common citizens, and temporal power upon a lesser scale 
was here as much the object of ambition and struggle as 
'it had been in the great empires, yet the circumstances of 
the middling and lower classes were not so depressed, and 
the way was opened to a better adjustment of the various 
ranks of society. While, in the south of Europe, the new 
nations had gradually become established, disturbing and 
unsettling changes still continued in its northern and east- 
ern parts. These were chiefly occasioned by the Nor- 
mans, who were looking about in various directions for a 
new home. One branch of their nation had planted itself 



172 GERMANY UNDER CONRAD I. 

in the north of France : they made desolating incursions 
into Germany; in Russia they established, in 862, a dis- 
tinct Norman state ; they peopled Iceland ; and, in Eng- 
land, they maintained severe contests against Alfred the 
Great, but they could not prevail against him. Alfred was 
an excellent prince, and restored tranquillity and order to 
his country after the devastation and tyranny of the Danes. 
The advantages resulting to England from his wise and 
pious measures were considerable. He enacted a code of 
laws, founded in many respects on Scripture principles, 
and enforcing Scripture morality. He endeavored to im- 
prove the ministers of religion, by providing for their in- 
struction. The whole Bible was translated into Anglo- 
Saxon by his order. He undertook the version of the 
Psalms himself, but did not live to complete it. Hitherto 
the Bible had been inaccessible to them through their ig- 
norance of Latin. It is supposed that he founded the 
university of Oxford. He attempted, though without suc- 
cess, to put an end to slavery ; but he was more happy in 
his endeavors to promote justice and security. Trial by 
jury may also be traced up to Alfred. 

A large part of the Normans embraced Christianity, and 
settled in England: at a later period they obtained the 
perpetual sovereignty of that country. 

In the ninth century, during the itinerancy of Ansgarius 
as the apostle of the north, Christianity was transplanted 
from Constantinople to Bohemia and Moravia, which two 
countries at that period formed one powerful kingdom, 
which often troubled Germany with invasions. 

II.— GERMANY UNDER CONRAD I. AND THE 
SAXON EMPERORS. 

After the extinction of the Carlovingian family, Conrad, 
duke of the Franks, was chosen king in Germany. He 
was a brave and able prince, but reigned only seven years, 



AND THE SAXON EMPERORS. 173 

and was succeeded by Henry the Fowler, duke of Saxony, 
A. D. 918-936, the most powerful and best qualified Ger- 
man prince of the age. He soon found means to reduce 
the dukes of Swabia and Bavaria, who opposed him, to 
subjection, and reunited to Germany the dukedom of Lor- 
raine, which had formed part of France ; for as these two 
countries were manifestly distinct by their languages, so 
the separation between them had been all along becoming 
more and more apparent. He concluded a treaty of peace 
with the Hungarians, a barbarous and fierce nation, who 
from time to time had invaded Germany, and had made 
frightful ravages ; and he availed himself of this interval 
to fortify his cities, discipline his troops, commence obsti- 
nate skirmishes with the Slavonian tribes, and habituate 
his Germans to this kind of warfare. When the stipulated 
period for the cessation of hostilities with the Hungarians 
had elapsed, and Henry had refused to pay them any fur- 
ther tribute, they invaded Saxony with a large army, and 
a battle ensued near Merseburg, in the year 933. Henry 
attacked them with ejaculations to God, and soon routed 
them with great slaughter. The tumulus is stiU pointed 
out upon the field where they were buried. Henry 
solemnized a general thanksgiving in the church at Merse- 
burgh for his signal victory. The towns which he built 
and fortified for defense against the Hungarians were the 
first foundation of that Germanic citizenship which began 
to be formed at this time. He granted to their inhabit- 
ants special rights and immunities, chartered them with 
the privilege of annual markets and conventions, and armed 
them against foreign intruders. Arts and manufactures 
now advancing, became a means of prosperity to the poor 
inhabitants, and gave rise to a powerful middle rank, be- 
tween those nobles and serfs who heretofore had comprised 
nearly the whole population of Germany. 

The throne, after his death, devolved to his son Otho I., 
a prince who inherited his father's virtues and valor. His 



174 GERMANY UNDER CONRAD I. 

reign was one uninterrupted course of warfare. Several 
of the rebellions he had to encounter originated from his 
own family ; but he showed on all such occasions not only 
his courage in putting them down, but likewise his religious 
magnanimity in so readily yielding pardon to the vanquished. 
He was active in prevailing with the Wends, as far as the 
Oder, to embrace Christianity ; and he humbled King Ha- 
rold of Denmark, so far as to extort from him a promise to 
receive baptism. He also made himself master of Italy, 
which at that time was subject to the margrave Beren- 
garius ; and got himself crowned at Pavia as king of Italy, 
and at Rome as emperor of the Romans. From that time 
it became the usage for the sovereigns of Germany to assume 
the title of Roman emperor. The Hungarians also renewed 
their hostilities, and in 955 they invaded Bavaria, where- 
upon his brother Henry, duke of Bavaria, sent for his 
immediate assistance. Otho lost no time in collecting as 
good an army as the hurry would permit, and his troops 
spent the night before the battle, in preparing for the 
hazard of the following day, in fasting and prayer. On 
the 10th of August the general engagement ensued ; and 
when at its very commencement all seemed to be lost, 
Otho fell on his knees, and prayed for the help of God. 
He then at the head of his Saxon troops poured down upon 
the enemy, and almost annihilated their whole army. The 
Hungarians desisted from that time from their invasions 
of Germany. After Otho had made several other expedi- 
tions to Italy, whose inhabitants were continually revolting 
from him, he died in the year 973. He was one of the 
most distinguished princes that Germany ever possessed, 
for which reason he was surnamed the Great. His remains 
were interred in the cathedral of Magdeburg.* 

As the Romans of ancient history had, from the time of 
Augustus, to put forth their utmost strength upon Germany, 

* Where his splendid mausoleum is still to be seen. — Trans. 



AND THE SAXON EMPERORS. 175 

SO the strength of the Germans, from the time of the first 
Roman expedition of Otho the Great, began to exhaust 
itself in Italy. Every Germanic emperor, from that time, 
thought himself obliged to undertake an expedition into 
that country, to secure his dominion over the conquered 
provinces, and to solemnize his imperial coronation as 
sovereign of the West. Tliis proved very detrimental to 
Germany ; its affairs at home were, during such intervals, 
frequently retarded or altogether neglected, so that they 
fell under the influence of the Papal power; while its 
feudal princes of the larger provinces, the dukes of Lor- 
raine, Saxony, Franconia, Bavaria, Swabia, etc., took 
occasion, from the emperor's absence, to abuse their power 
for their own aggrandizement and greater independence. 
Their example was followed by the lesser princes and 
lords, who held their possessions, some as an immediate 
fief from the emperor himself, others as a tenure from the 
princes who themselves were his vassals. Amid the 
many and variously opposing interests and struggles 
which arose out of these relative dependencies, in which 
the serfs conflicted with the inferior nobles ; these, with 
the ducal princes ; the latter, with the emperor ; and 
again, the ducal princes, counts, and knights with one 
another — the cities, by little and little, struggled into free- 
dom, as did also the individual possessors of land ; that is, 
they shook off the yoke of vassalage to their princely lords, 
and remained only under the supremacy of the emperor. 
Thus, though such absence in Italy of the successive 
Germanic emperors proved injurious for the time to peace 
and order in Germany, it will be perceived that it was 
part of the plan of Providence for preserving an equipoise 
in Christendom at large. The harmony and coherence of 
the German states were, indeed, in many ways thus endan- 
gered : Italian demoralization and luxury were introduced, 
and not only many an emperor, but also many an army 
from Germany, found a grave in Italy ; yet all this served, 



176 CONRAD II. AND HENRY III. 

from time to time, as a check upon the growing influence 
of the Papacy, which was continually more and more dis- 
covering its ambitious aim at universal dominion. 

The immediate successors of Otho the Great, namely, 
Otho II., Otho III., and Henry II., who reigned from 973 
to 1024, had already experienced that the possession of 
Italy, for which they incessantly struggled, was the de- 
struction of repose and power both to themselves and to 
their German country. Continually had they conflicts 
with the refractory Romans : the two former died in Italy, 
and the Saxon imperial dynasty ended with Henry II., 
by whom the kingdom of Burgundy was annexed to 
Germany. 

111.— CONRAD 11. AND HENRY III. 

After the death of Henry II., Conrad of Franconia was 
chosen emperor, at an assembly of the princes and nobles, 
which was held between Mayence and Worms. With 
him commenced the line of the Franconian, or Salic em- 
perors. In his military expeditions to Italy, Burgundy, 
and Lorraine, he gave proof of his German valor and 
firmness ; in his transactions with Denmark and Poland, 
his political wisdom ; and in his arrangements and ex- 
ertions for the welfare of Germany, he evinced his sincere 
and benevolent intentions. What might not princes such 
as he and his son Henry III. have acliieved, had they ap- 
peared in more civilized times, with less raw material to 
fashion, and fewer martial hinderances to contend with ! 
Conrad died at Utrecht, in 1039, and was succeeded by 
Henry III., who was then twenty-two years of age. Conrad 
had provided that his son should receive homage in his 
father's lifetime as king of Germany, Burgundy, and Italy ; 
indeed, it was generally the aim of the Prankish dynasty 
all along to make the empire hereditary to themselves, 
without wishing to abolish that right of election which the 
German estates hereditarily exercised. The unity of the 



OTHER COUNTRIES OF EUROPE. 177 

whole country and of its form of government was thus best 
provided for : the sovereign himself had an additional in- 
ducement to rule his empire with carefulness, forbearance, 
and fidelity, if he might hope to bequeath to his own 
family the benefits of his diligence ; and as the right of 
the electoral princes would still be exercised, at least in 
form, it could upon any occasion interpose with efiect and 
benefit whenever any emperor's son should appear unfit to 
be the heir to the crown. It would, perhaps, be unjust to 
regard, as a mere piece of self-interest, the endeavors of 
the Saxon and Frankish emperors to make the Germanic 
throne hereditary ; and much more to maintain, that they 
had no eye whatever to the welfare of their country. 
Henry III. governed with great power, and died in the 
year 1056. He humbled Bohemia and Hungary, kept in 
check the restless Saxons, and dethroned and appointed 
popes by his sole imperial right and might. As he had 
the means, so probably he had laid plans for extending 
his conquests and dominions ; but he was cut off in the 
thirty-ninth year of his age. The minority of his son, 
Henry TV., became an occasion of lamentable disorders 
in Germany. 

IV.— OTHER COUNTRIES OF EUROPE. 

In France, the regal authority was engaged about this 
time in perpetual broils with its powerful vassals, who, 
like their kings, struggled for absolute dominion in their 
own allotted territories, and cared little for the welfare 
and prosperity of the nation at large^ or for its general 
consolidation and unity. The strongest of these vassals 
was the duke of Normandy ; and if the whole of France 
did not become subject to him, it was only because the 
Normans had distributed their forces into expeditions for 
foreign conquest, they having erected a Norman kingdom 
in Lower Italy and Sicily ; and, besides this, they had con- 
stantly an eye to the possessing of England. The Anglo- 
8* 



178 HENRY IV. AND THE PAPACY. 

Saxon king, Edward the Confessor, who had no children, 
chose William, duke of Normandy, for his successor ; \vho 
having defeated the Anglo-Saxons in the battle of Hastings, 
on the 14th of October, 1066, was crowned king of Eng- 
land at Westminster Abbey. From that period were the 
Normans the masters of England, and the Saxon party 
was crushed for ever. Moreover, in Denmark and the other 
northern kingdoms, about the end of the tenth century, 
the contest of Christianity with heathenism was decided, 
while gi'eat political commotions changed the aspect of 
those realms. Canute the Great founded a powei-ful do- 
minion in the north, where various ancient dynasties hence- 
forth became extinct. At the same period, Prince Wladi- 
mer introduced Christianity into Russia, and united himself 
to the Greek church. 

v.— HENRY ]V. AND THE PAPACY. 

Henry IV. Avas spoiled in his education by unskillful and 
unprincipled tutors ; he was taught only to humor his own 
will, and to put in execution his unbridled fancies, how- 
ever much to the mconvenience of other men. His quarrel 
with the Saxons, whom he oppressed and injured, proved 
the occasion of his dethronement by the Germanic princes. 
He found, indeed, help in the loyal cities, and even suc- 
ceeded in defeatmg and subduing the refractory Saxons ; 
but soon there arose against him a more powerful foe, to 
whom he was obliged most abjectly to submit. For, about 
this time, A. D. 1073, Hildebrand, the son of a carpenter, 
was elected bishop, or pope of Rome, by the title of 
Gregory YII. Hitherto it liad been customary lor the 
Roman bishop, as the more generally acknowledged head 
of the western churcli, to be elected conjointly by the 
clergy in Rome, by the people, and by the emperor, as tem- 
poral sovereign of Italy. But Gregory VII. put an end 
to this hereditary custom. For though he himself grudg- 
ingly received from Henry IV. his conhrmation in the 



HENRY IV. AND THE PAPACY. 179 

popedom, yet lie decreed the rule that, in future, the su- 
preme bishop should be elected only by that body of the 
chief clergy at Rome which is called the conclave of car- 
dinals. Gregory, in general, pursued with vigorous bold- 
ness that hue of policy which had been begun, about the 
middle of the eleventh century, by Leo IX. ; and, with 
iron firmness, he made it continually his object to remedy 
abuses which had crept into the church, and to restore 
unity within its pale. The princes and kings had hitherto 
exercised the right of their own choice in appointing cler- 
gymen to vacant livings within their respective dominions, 
and it frequently happened that they bestowed such ap- 
pointments on those who offered most money for them, and 
thus they literally sold the preferments of the church. To 
this ecclesiastical traffic, (which, from the case recorded in 
Acts viii, 18, &c., is called simony,) it was Gregory's plea- 
sure to put an end, to wrest from the princes the right of 
choosing and appointing church ministers, and to leave 
them merely the right of confirming the choice, or rather 
the mere form of doing so. He published a decree to this 
effect, and affixed the ban of excommunication to its non- 
observance. He also introduced the law of celibacy, by 
which the clergy were " forbidden to marry," in order that 
family cares might not render them subservient to the in- 
terests of their respective princes, but that they might be 
at leisure to devote themselves exclusively to the Papal 
power as the centre of ecclesiastical unity. Nor did this 
alone satisfy him. Quite new ideas of the relative bearing 
of spiritual and temporal power were from this time to 
become current in Cliristendom. Hitherto the bishop of 
Home had been considered as a subject of the empire. 
Gregory was not content to set the popedom upon an 
equality with the imperial dignity, but it was his pleasure 
that the former should liave tlie precedency. He main- 
tained that the pope was "' Christ's vicar upon earth ;" and 
that, as such, he is above every temporal power ; that the 



180 HENRY IV. AND THE PAPACY. 

pope is the sun, and the emperor the moon, receiving its 
light from the sun, as the sun receives its own from God ; 
that the Germanic empire and every other kingdom of 
Christendom are to be regarded as feudatory to the Roman 
see, the latter having power to bestow and to withdraw 
them at pleasure ; and that it belongs to the emperor, as 
the pope's chief vassal, to regard him as his supreme judge. 
This endeavor of the hierarchy to prostrate beneath it 
everything great had already budded in the popedom be- 
fore the time of Gregory ; and we meet with similar aims 
in the ancient heathen hierarchies of Egypt and India, as 
also in the modern ones of Thibet and Japan. But this 
endeavor assumed its antichristian character only in the 
Papacy, because it here wrought under the pretext of 
Christian truth. As long as the temporal princes, and 
especially the German emperors, who from this time be- 
came involved in perpetual broils vfitli the Papacy, stood 
in the way as liinderances to its absolute domination, it 
could not develop itself as that antichristianity which 
exalte th itself against God himself, and against the very 
worship of God, 2 Thess. ii, 4-7 ; for it could not v,'ith full 
success oppose itself to the temporal power. But, though 
the popes could not succeed in robbing the temporal rulers 
of all their power, they have hitherto not wanted the will 
to do it ; and certainly an ambition for such supreme tem- 
poral dominion — an ambition wliicli has devolved from the 
ancient Roman and temporal power to the modern Roman 
ecclesiastical one — may evidently be discerned in the Pa- 
pacy ever since the age of Gregory VII. ; tlierefore may 
Rome, in the prophetic language of Scripture, be de- 
nominated Babylon, because in Rome the spirit of that 
tirst great universal empire has continued to operate. We 
nmst not, however, confound the popedom with all Papists 
indiscriminately. Some of the latter were personally too 
good, others too vreak, others of too common rank in the 
world, to be in reality even conscious of this ambitious 



HENRY IV. AND THE PAPACY. 181 

struggle, much less to be really accessory to its promotion ; 
and even those who were distinguished as promoting it, 
had not in view the ultimate object wherein Popery de- 
velops itself as antichristianism ; hence they did not fore- 
see whither their aims would finally lead, and even some 
palliations for their conduct may be found in the circum- 
stances of the times they lived in. The church was 
unsettled, sunk away into abuses; was oppressed, over- 
reached, or ill-dealt with by princes, and rent by divi- 
sions ; and such individuals wished to raise it to splendor, 
power, and unity, and to deliver it from the influence of 
profane hands. But, in all this they, and even the better- 
minded among them, were instruments of the Papal power, 
which was laboring upon a fixed plan for a distant object ; 
and it is only in this Avay that we can account for the fact, 
that the individual members of this great body of dominion, 
however mutually diverse their personal characters, and 
the circumstances of the various times in which they se- 
verally lived, still ever held fast the same principles, and 
labored toward the same end for so many centuries toge- 
ther. This is a phenomenon quite without a parallel in 
human history. 

Henry IV. was complained of to Pope Gregory by the 
malcontent Saxons, and the haughty pontiff gladly availed 
himself of this occasion to evince his spiritual power, and 
to humble the emperor. He cited him to Rome, there 
to answer for his proceedings. But Henry, not having 
forgotten the puissant deeds of his own father, who had 
dethroned three popes, was in nowise inclined to comply 
with such a citation. On the contrary, in an assembly of 
German bishops, at Worms, A. D. 1076, he obtained a 
formal deposition of the pope himself; and sent him notice 
to that effect by an ambassador. Hereupon, Gregory pro- 
nounced against Henry the sentence of excommunication, 
declared him unworthy of the imperial crown, and absolved 
the Germans from their oath of allegiance to him. Now 



182 HENRY IV. AND THE PAPACY. 

as Henry, by his arbitrary and oppressive government, had 
made himself many enemies, this strange and unexampled 
measure of the pope gained much applause among the 
German princes, so that the emperor was plainly enough 
given to understand, that unless he reconciled himself to 
the pope within a year, the imperial dignity would pass 
into other hands. This remonstrance was what Henry had 
not expected, and it overwhelmed his soul ; for, hitherto, 
he had not feared the pope's interdict or anathema. He, 
therefore, set out with a few faithful attendants, crossed 
with great toil and danger the snow-covered Alps, and 
found the pope at the castle of Canossa. Gregory made 
him feel all his iron severity : three whole days was the 
king obliged to wait, dressed in a linen frock, on the snowy 
ground of the castle-yard, until it was the proud pope's 
pleasure to admit him into his presence ; and the conditions 
which he imposed upon him bore all the characters of 
revolting hardship. Henry was required to forego all ex- 
ercise of his imperial rights, and to lay aside all insignia 
of his imperial dignity, until he had ansvrered all the charges 
brought against him before a tribunal of the princes of the 
empire ; nor till then was it to be decided whether he should 
be suffered to retain the crown. Henry made the most 
solemn promises to perform all that was required of him ; 
but when he was again at large, and on his way back, his 
high-born pride began again to stir itself with much dis- 
pleasure at the indignities he had received. The hatred 
which the people of Upper Italy had conceived against the 
violent and arbitrary pontiff came seasonably to his help, 
and he soon appeared at the head of a powerful army, to 
which the loyal German cities joined themselves, to meet 
in the field Rudolph of Swabia, who, during his absence, 
had set up as emperor In opposition to him. A sanguinary 
engagement took place near Merseburgh, in which Henry 
indeed was beaten, but then also his opponent Rudolph had 
fallen in that engagement, and a great part of the Germans, 



HENRY IV. AND THE PAPACY. 183 

returning to their allegiance, joined Henry, so that he was 
now enabled to march into Italy, and to besiege the pope 
under the walls of Kome itself. Gregory made his escape 
to Salerno, in Lower Italy, and put himself under the pro- 
tection of Robert Guiscard, duke of the Normans, and died 
soon after. His firmness forsook him not to the day of 
his death ; he preferred to sacrifice his life, rather than to 
make the least concession to the emperor ; and he would 
have commanded our admiration had he been the cham- 
pion of a worthier cause. 

But Henry had soon to experience that, though a pope 
may die, the Papal power still lives. For Gregory's suc- 
cessors, Victor III. and Urban II., renewed the anathema 
against him ; and the latter soon wickedly prompted Henry's 
own sons, Conrad and Henry, to rebellion against their 
father. Henry IV. spent the latter days of his life in prison, 
whither one of his sons had allured him ; and, at length, 
in HOG, he died at Luettich, after he had plentifully, and 
through his own fault, tasted all the bitterness of a mise- 
rable princely life. Neither did his son and successor, 
Henry V., go unpunished ; for God generally, in the most 
observable manner, chastises undutiful children for offenses 
against their parents. It is true, he obtained successes in 
war against the Hungarians and Poles, and kept the Ger- 
manic empire better together than did his father ; but he 
also got into contention with the pope at Rome, concerning 
liereditary right in Upper Italy, as likewise with the Ger- 
manic princes ; and he was not favored with a son to in- 
herit his dominions after him, so that with his death the 
Prankish dynasty became extinct, A. D. 1125. Lotharius 
IL, duke of Saxony, w^as elected his successor, and Pope 
Innocent II. crowned him emperor of the Romans, after 
Lotharius had declared himself for Innocent in his contest 
with the rival pope, Anacletus IL This emperor, never- 
theless, continued against that very pope the quarrel of 
Henry V., respecting hereditary right in Upper Italy, till, 



184 THE FEUDAL AND HANSE SYSTEM. 

at length, he came to a stipulation to hold it as a feudal 
tenure under the pope, and to pay him a yearly tribute for 
the same. Hitherto the Roman pontiff had held his pos- 
sessions, called " the land of the church," as a feudatory to 
the emperor ; but now the emperor was become the pope's 
vassal for his property in Tuscany. Besides this, Lotharius 
II. had ever to contend with the dukes of Franconia and 
Swabia, who were both of them of the house of Hohen- 
staufen, and who disputed his claims, they considering 
themselves as the rightful heirs of Henry V. ; and, foras- 
much as he had also given the dukedom of Saxony to his 
nephew, Henry of Bavaria, surnamed the Proud, as a 
balance against the power of the Swabian party, he hereby 
laid the foundation of that long conflict between the Welfs 
and Waiblings, (Guelphs and Gibbelines,) which we shall 
meet with in our review of the Hohenstaufen imperial 
dynasty. 

VL— THE FEUDAL AND HANSE SYSTEM. 

While, at this period, through community of manners 
and customs, language and laws, as also by being under 
one and the same imperial head, elected all along by the 
ducal princes, with the concurrence of the freemen, the 
various Germanic tribes, the Bavarians, Franks, Saxons, 
Swabians, etc., continued, on the one hand, to be more 
and more assimilated, so as to become one German 
people ; their mutual distinctions, on the other hand, were 
kept up by the circumstance, that the great feudal tenures 
(of dukedoms and margraviates) became more and more 
generally hereditary. The emperors retained the right to 
grant and vest them in their respective inheritors ; but, 
in general, they saw themselves compelled to leave the 
sons of the ducal princes in their hereditary possessions, 
and to confirm them therein, because their own imperial 
power was in part dependent on the good will of the 



THE FEUDAL AND HANSE SYSTEM. 185 

princes ; for, as soon as they were elected to the imperial 
dignity, they were obliged to relinquish their own duke- 
dom to another, and thus no longer possessed any heredi- 
tary dominion. The ducal princes availed themselves of 
such occasions to confirm and extend their own power ; 
while the emperors, in order not to leave their own families 
quite curtailed under such circumstances, sought their in- 
demnification in making the imperial sovereignty hereditary. 
The title of duke, margrave, count palatme, earl, etc., now no 
longer, as at first, denoted an office held merely for life, but 
the hereditary tenure of a large estate under the crown, 
and which adhered to some particular family. Thus the 
distinction between higher and lower nobility, the latter of 
which has all along more and more borne the same relation to 
the ducal princes, as that of the ducal princes to the emperor, 
now gradually began to show itself. The tenures of the 
chief ecclesiastics, as archbishops, bishops, and abbots, be- 
came separated from the temporal ones ; and the third, or 
middle rank, that of artisans and tradesmen, to whom Henry 
V. gave the general title of free burghers, gained wider 
footing, and more rights and privileges. Some of the 
towns which they inhabited were under the direct juris- 
diction of the ducal princes, and others immediately under 
that of the king or emperor himself. As it was the lot of the 
few latter to enjoy the greater freedom, or less oppression, 
so the others, which composed the greater number, made 
strenuous efforts to stand in the same relation to their 
ducal princes. These struggles issued in the constitution 
of what are called the free imperial cities, whose civil rights 
as burghers even persons of noble rank and descent were 
glad to enjoy. Ever since the discovery and working of 
the silver mines in Saxony, which began in the time of 
Otho the Great, wealth and industry were also promoted 
in the German provinces ; and the manufacture of metals, 
broadcloth, and linen, made considerable progress. With 
these stood connected the promotion of traffic in general, 



186 STATE OF CULTIVATION AND LETTERS. 

which became established at Bremen, Hamburg, Cologne, 
and other favorably situated towns, though trade was still 
for the most part in the hands of Jews. 

VII.— STATE OF CULTIVATION AND LETTERS. 

The manners of this period were still very barbarous. 
Drunkenness, strife, the passion for hunting and war, plun- 
der, and disregard to human life and liberty, were preva- 
lent in every quarter. Even the ecclesiastics shared in 
these rude manners, and occasionally settled matters by 
arms, even within the walls of their churches. Even their 
" God's truce,'' a law that was enacted in the yeai' 1038, 
and whereby all quarrels were forbidden from Wednesday 
evening to Monday morning, was insufficient to restore 
tranquillity. The power of the stronger (which was called 
'■^Jist right") was everywhere acknowledged as valid. 
Nevertheless, the church at times produced some softening 
influence upon these rude usages, and in the newly estab- 
lished rank of free citizens, (burghers,) there were gradu- 
ally developed more quiet and domestic manners, more 
continence and general civilization. The bulk of the peo- 
ple were not yet enfeebled by luxuiy and debauchery ; 
but their grand disease was an overweening dependence 
on their bodily strength. The power of corporeal sense 
was the ruling one, and was not sufficiently humanized 
and refined by the education of the intellectual powers ; 
but then it was also not as yet unnerved by false refinements, 
and estranged from truth by the affectation of mere human 
wisdom. As in the period of the Babylonian and Persian 
empire, before the Grecian spirit transformed it, strength 
and bodily power, with some recognition of the true God, 
may be said to have characterized those times ; so the 
same may be said of this period of the habits of the Ger- 
manic nations. With all the rudeness of their boasts of 
strength, with all the sallies of their uncivilized nature, 
there was still much honesty and fidelity ; with all their 



STATE OF CULTIVATION AND LETTERS. 187 

ignorance, and in part heathen superstition, there was 
much susceptibility of religious influence, great esteem for 
what is sacred, much public spirit and patriotic self- 
denial. 

The ignorance of those times was indeed great and gene- 
ral : even the redoubted emperors had often scarcely 
learned to read ; and as to any schools for the special in- 
struction of the people at large, such things were not 
thought of, for want of the common means of education, 
especially the great scarcity and enormous price of books 
made it almost impracticable. Besides, the modern ver- 
nacular languages were not so formed and settled as to be 
available for general public instruction ; this being never 
found to precede, but always to follow, some preliminary 
scientific advancement of the few. The language of the 
learned was exeliisively the Latin tongue. In those tem- 
pestuous and military days everything like science had 
taken refuge almost exclusively in the cloister. The 
monks, with their industrious transcribing of the Scrip- 
tures, the fathers, the Latin and Greek classics, etc., were 
busied in providing rather for after times than for their 
own, consequently the work of education itself was very 
rarely attended to, except in such monastic seminaries as 
were then to be met with in Italy, at Bologna ; in Spain, 
at Barcelona, Seville, and Cordova ; in France, at Paris, 
Rheims, Metz, Laon, Toulouse, Marseilles, and Ferrieres ; 
in Germany, at Fulda, Hirschau, Eeichenau, St. Gall, 
Corvey, Hirschfeld, Weissenburg, Ratisbon, Treves, May- 
ence, Utrecht, Liittich, Cologne, Bremen, Hildesheim, and 
Paderborn. In England, those scientific habits which had 
flourished under the Anglo-Saxon kings were violently 
disturbed by the martial disquietude of that period, and 
were quite interrupted for a time by the invasions of the 
rude Danes and Normans. The more eminent men of 
learning, in those days, were Lanfranc of Pavia, who died 
in 1089, Berengarius of Tours, (d. 1089,) Abbot William of 



188 THE CRUSADES. 

Hirschau, (d. 1091,) Abbot Notker of St. Gall, (d. 1029,) 
Adam of Bremen, (d. 1076,) Lambert of Aschaffenburg, 
(d. 1077,) Marianus of Fulda, (d. 1086,) and Guide of 
Arezzo, (d. 1028.) 

VIII.— THE CRUSADES. 

(a.) Their Origiyi and Design. 

The professed Christians had, from very early times, 
learned to regard with affection and respect the place 
where the Son of God had spent his earthly life, had 
manifested forth his glory, and had accomplished his great 
work of redemption ; and the empress Helena, mother of 
Constantine the Great, having erected a church over the 
spot Avhich is still regarded as that where our Saviour was 
buried, almost everybody had long accor,]ited it one of the 
greatest blessings of this life to be able to visit that sacred 
place, at whatever distance from their own country. The 
more Christianity became corrupted with error and super- 
stition, and especially with the notion of acquiring merit 
before God by our own doings and by ceremonial perform- 
ances, the more value was set upon pilgrimages to the 
holy sepulchre, and the more frequent did these become. 
Even the Saracens, who took Jerusalem in 637, were so 
far from discouraging such pilgrim visits, that they them- 
selves entertained a reverence for Jerusalem as a holy 
city. The Christians, through a mistaken idea of the pre- 
dicted millennium, had cherished a notion that Christ's 
second personal coming would take place in a thousand 
years after his first coming, and that he would then estab- 
lish his kingdom over the whole world. This gave occa- 
sion to those very numerous pilgrimages that were made 
to Jerusalem about the beginning of the tenth century; 
and they continued to be made for a great length of time, 
because others, even after that hope was frustrated, still 
reckoned the thousand years to commence from Christ's 



THE CRUSADES. 189 

ascension, or from the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. 
Thus, from Bavaria alone, there went, on one occasion, 
twelve thousand men and women as pilgrims to the Holy 
Land, because they supposed the judgment-day to be near, 
and hence were desirous to be ready upon the spot where 
it was expected that Christ would appear. AVhatever re- 
markable phenomena or visitations upon any country were 
observable, such as comets, famine, earthquakes, pesti- 
lence, locusts, etc., all served to keep the people in awful 
expectation, and to excite them to the use of extraordinary 
means for quieting their minds. In the year 1094, Jeru- 
salem was taken by the Seldshuk Turks, who disturbed 
and maltreated the pilgrims, and the latter, on returning 
to Europe, vented their mortified feelings in loud com- 
plaints respecting the great misfortune that had befallen 
the holy sepulchre, and made strong appeals to Christen- 
dom for its recovery from the infidels. The most urgent 
and successful of these was a French monk, named Peter 
of Amiens, who soon found Pope Urban II. ready to favor 
his cause ; and who, by his violent and enthusiastic ha- 
rangues before immense assemblies of ignorant hearers, 
made a deep impression upon their excitable minds. Itine- 
rating from town to town, he everywhere inflamed tliou- 
sands to the resolution of wearing the badge of a red cross 
of woolen cloth, in token that they had pledged themselves 
to join an expedition to the Holy Land, for the recovery 
of the sepulchre, etc., from the Mohammedans. What he 
had thus done by way of preparation, was completed by 
Pope Urban II., in two great public meetings at Placenza 
and Clermont, in 1095. One large military host made 
preparations for the adventurous expedition ; and another 
larger band of mingled people, who had not patience to wait 
for such preparations, set out at once, under the conduct of 
Peter the hermit, and of the knight AValter of Habenicht. 
Such was the origin of those crusades, which, with seve- 
ral interruptions, were continued for nearly two centuries ; 



190 THE CRUSADES. 

and though they did not gam their chief object for any 
permanency, yet they had the most decided influence in 
remodeling the state of European habits and manners. 

From the obscurity that still hangs over the history of 
this century, it is not easy to point out the connection of 
all the causes which wrought together in stirring up the 
mighty masses of a rude people to such strange and per- 
severing exertions. We know not how much of it is attri- 
butable to the activity of invisible powers ; though other and 
similar instances justify us in supposing that their agency 
may have been exercised. It is, however, evident that 
superstition and ignorance had very much perverted 
men's minds, while they must have had a great esteem for 
things they deemed sacred, and a deep religious suscepti- 
bility, before they could have been roused to such enthu- 
siasm for the imaginary honor and glory of the Christian 
church, at the same time that they were so very deficient 
in real practical Christianity. Would that such a religious 
disposition existed in our own times, turned to a holier and 
better object, the conversion of the heathen ! whereas this 
noble business is as yet left to the exertions of a com- 
paratively few individuals, and is quite overlooked, if not 
very much despised, by the generality. 

Many, doubtless, in thus hazarding and throwing away 
their lives in the East, were not a little influenced by a 
feehng of unsatisfied spiritual desire. The soul's unbound- 
ed longing after truth, and inward peace and blessedness, 
had been awakened by the ordinances of the church, but 
not satisfied by them. The consciousness of sin, and of 
the need of forgiveness, were felt, but the right remedy 
was not applied : inward peace can come by nothing but 
the gospel, and this was not preached ; superstitious cere- 
monies, whose meaning the people could not understand, 
had taken its place. Men were led into the error of think- 
ing that they might make amends for their sins by morti- 
fication and self-denial, and earn salvation by their own 



THE CRUSADES. 101 

performances. The true doctrine of salvation by free 
grace and mercy, the doctrine of justification by faith 
without any merit of works, had fallen quite into the back- 
ground : and to take part in the crusades, which the popes 
and priests cried up as a thing highly meritorious before 
God, was regarded as one of the means by which men 
might rid themselves of their secret disquietude for sin, 
and enjoy peace with their Maker. The severe toils and 
privations of a crusade, and to die in the Holy Land, 
which was reckoned equivalent to Christian martyrdom, 
were said to make amends for all sins committed in any 
other country. 

The crusades, moreover, were adapted to help the 
Papacy in its gigantic aims at independence, temporal 
dominion, and complete supremacy. Princes who, by their 
power or influential character, appeared likely to obstruct 
those aims, were urged by the pope to take the cross, and 
to spend their strength in the East against the Turks, that 
they might thus be disabled from applying it to the limita- 
tion of the Papal power. The popes sought, also, in the 
same way to disburden themselves of heretics, that is, of 
those who, with arguments sound or unsound, dared to 
controvert the Papal supremacy, or any of the prevalent 
dogmas of the Romish Church. Thus those who were 
merely suspected of heresy vrere often artfully directed to 
join a crusade ; and then, when once a few successful 
exploits had been wrought by the pilgrims in the Holy 
Land, these were immediately alledged as a proof that 
there was nothing impossible in the enterprise ; and every 
argument was urged from the consideration, that what had 
once been gained must not again be lost, as this would be 
to make a mere playthins^ of tlie Christian name and of 
European heroism. 

Such a concurrence of circumstances, considerations, 
plans, and events, serves to account in some degree, if not 
entirelv, for that insatiate zeal with which one immense 



192 THE CRUSADES. 

host after another plunged into the grave, that was pre- 
pared in the East for western warriors in general, and for 
those of Germany in particular. 

(b.) The First Crusade. 

The great and unbridled multitude, drawn from the 
lower classes, who, with Peter, and Walter, and other 
adventurers, at their head, had set out from France and 
Grermany, conducted themselves in such a disorderly man- 
ner on their way through Hungary and Greece, that most 
of them were overtaken by divine rebukes before they 
could force their passage through the Lesser Asia. Of 
the whole immense host, not more than three thousand 
finally escaped with their lives, and fled back to Constan- 
tinople. The main crusading army, under the command 
of Godfrey, duke of Bouillon, did not march till the year 
1096. It was joined by several princes of France, the 
Netherlands, and South Italy, and when encamped all 
together before Constantinople, it numbered four hundred 
thousand strong, besides an innumerable baggage attend- 
ance, etc. But no sooner had it begun to move through 
Lesser Asia, than a large portion of it became disabled, 
and perished by the treachery of the Greeks, by famine, 
the heat of the climate, and the Turkish sword. Before 
Antioch in Syria, a city at that time well fortified and 
defended, this host of crusaders lay encamped as besiegers 
for eight months together, and had already lost the greater 
number of its able-bodied troops, when, at length, it suc- 
ceeded in taking the city, by means of treachery within. 
But soon were they, in turn, besieged at Antioch, by a 
great army of Saracens, (Turks,) and famine arose to 
such a degree, that even Baldwin, count of Flanders, one 
of their wealthiest and boldest leaders, went about the city 
begging for a morsel of bread. Superstition was the 
means of delivering them from this extremity. Some one 
pretended to have discovered the sacred spear with which 



THE CRUSADES. 193 

our Saviour's body was pierced upon the cross, and this 
announcement roused the spirits of the soldiers to make 
one desperate effort more to repulse the enemy. The 
Saracen army was beaten, and the crusaders pushed on for 
Jerusalem. But the strength of their army had very much 
wasted away, so that they now amounted to no more than 
twenty thousand foot, and fifteen hundred horse, and 
Jerusalem was well guarded and garrisoned with a powerful 
force. Nevertheless, on the loth of July, 1099, they took 
the city by storm, and the whole Turkish garrison, with all 
the Mohammedan inhabitants, were cruelly put to death, 
so that the streets literally ran down with blood. The 
government of Jerusalem was committed to Godfrey of 
Bouillon, who died the next year, and left it in the hands 
of his brother Baldwin. From that time, till the year 
1187, there reigned at Jerusalem a succession of professedly 
Christian kings, and Christianity seemed to have erected 
for itself a permanent residence once more in the place 
from whence it had first proceeded. And yet this domi- 
nion was, upon the whole, nothing better than the dream of 
an expelled monarch, imagining in his sleep that his king- 
dom had been restored to him. 

(c.) Chivalry. 

For the protection of the holy sepulchre, and for re- 
inforcing the power of Christendom in the East, there 
were formed, in 1116, the order of the Knights of St. 
John of Jerusalem, that of the Knights Templars in 1118, 
and that of the Teutonic Knights in 1190 ; as chivalry in 
general, which was a peculiar characteristic of the middle 
ages, at that time developed itself with powerful effect. 
The dignity of knighthood depended not on high birth 
or power, but on personal valor, and was conferred upon 
none but those who had given proof of it by going through 
its required exercises and trials. It was necessary, indeed, 
that every knight should be free born, and also have the 

9 



194 THE CRUSADES. 

means of providing and maintaining a horse and a servant ; 
but even as tlie dignitaries of our universities — that of 
doctor for instance — can be conferred only upon those of 
intellectual acquirements, so could no one attain the honor 
of knighthood who had not distinguished himself by per- 
sonal advantages, by valor, activity, skill, and unblemished 
reputation ; and, therefore, as the son of the most learned 
professor cannot inherit by birth his father's professorship, 
no more could the son of the bravest knight, though the 
latter were even a duke, lawfully inherit by birth the honor 
of knighthood ; though it is true that such considerations 
were not always entirely overlooked. The candidate for 
this honor was obliged to undergo preparation by fasting, 
prayer, and confession, before he was allowed to take the 
chivalrous vow, which bound him to protect the church, 
with its widows and orphans, to draw the sword at any 
time in defense of right and innocence, to hear mass every 
day, and to lead a blameless life. Even eminent princes 
accounted it an honor to receive the order of knighthood ; 
and Francis I., king of France, permitted this dignity to 
be conferred on himself by the chevalier de Bayard, a 
mere nobleman. In times of peace, the tournaments, or 
prize combats, which somewhat resembled those of the 
Grecian games, furnished to the knights an opportunity of 
displaying their valor and dexterity in arms. But at such 
a martial period they had opportunity enough, in more 
serious combats, either to conquer, or to sell their lives as 
dearly as possible. 

Chivalry derived its earliest origin from the warlike 
spirit of the Germanic tribes, and it served effectually to 
nurture and support that spirit in its turn. The knights, 
by reason of the frequent wars of those times, became 
accustomed to a wandering and irregular manner of life, 
in which they were consequently disposed to continue 
during intervals of peace ; and many among them did so, 
because they had not property sufficient for their support, 



THE CRUSADES. 195 

and lived only by their sword. The richer sort I'esided 
in their strong rocky castles, and found plentiful occasion 
for mutual feuds, in an age when the right of the stronger 
was reckoned valid upon almost every occasion, and when 
every one sought to help himself before he claimed the 
help of the magistrate. The poorer knights lived by 
plunder; they pillaged the tradespeople, as the latter 
traveled with their goods from one town to another; or 
they engaged, for pay, to convoy and protect such against 
other highwaymen. Others were received by the monas- 
teries as ward and watch, and were well paid for their 
services ; or they joined, for regular pay, some standing 
garrison in the towns and cities. The orders of St. John, 
the Templars, and the Teutonic Knights, were distin- 
guished by particular laws and ordinances of their own. 
Care of the sick, defense and support of the needy, 
and especially the protection of pilgrims to the holy 
sepulchre, and unremitting war with the Saracens, with 
the observance of their special vow of celibacy, obedience, 
and poverty, constituted their principal engagements. 
The vast possessions of land and wealth, which they soon 
acquired as free-will offerings or presents in all countries, 
accrued not to the individual knights as private property, 
but to their order as a corporate body. Subsequently, 
when Jerusalem was again lost, the order of St. John 
removed their central residence to the island of Cyprus, 
and from thence to that of Rhodes ; but, finally, in the 
sixteenth century, to Malta, where they sustained a per- 
petual sti-uggle with the Turks, and continued to exist 
until the end of the eighteenth century. That of the 
Knights Templars was abolished without mercy as early 
as the year 1307, by Philip IV. of France, because it was 
charged with great degeneracy and gross vices. The 
Teutonic order, when Palestine fell under the Turkish 
power, turned toward Germany, and subsequently had its 
chief residence in Mergentheim. 



196 THE CRUSADES. 

Though much of what was noble and admirable per- 
vaded the original institution and history of these orders, 
and of chivalry in general, such things soon degenerated ; 
as every institution has done and must do, when not found- 
ed simply on the word of God, but depending on the mere 
powers and resources of human nature. It was especially 
by means of chivalry that false notions of honor, and god- 
less self-confidence, became more and more prevalent ; and 
hence that noblest victory, which consists in the real re- 
nunciation of self, though it hereby received much appa- 
rent homage, necessarily sunk more than ever in public 
estimation, amid such predominant striving for the subju- 
gation of exterior foes. The institution of chivalry, how- 
ever, was of great importance in the history of the middle 
ages, whose more pecuhar characteristic was a struggle 
between spiritual and temporal power. The martial spirit 
was kept up by it, effeminacy was prevented, and a barrier 
was opposed to the perfecting of Papal domination. As long 
as temporal princes had such supporters, the Papacy could 
not fully grasp the empire of the world ; and though it 
exercised great power and authority over men's minds, by 
the influence of its ambitious principles and of its spiritual 
terrors, yet it dared not touch with violent hands those 
temporal possessions, which many men value more than 
freedom of thought, or liberty of conscience. It is true, 
that even in the chivalrous as in the other dominant ranks 
of Germany and Italy, as well as among learned men 
themselves, (such as Bernard of Clairvaux and Arnold of 
Brescia,) there was clearly enough manifested the fierce 
opposition between spiritual and temporal power, and that 
there were spiritual as well as temporal orders of knight- 
hood ; so that there were some men who were not disposed 
to yield themselves as mere passive instruments to the 
Papal domination. 



HOUSE OF HOHENSTAUTEN. 197 

IX.— HOUSE OF HOHENSTAUFEN. 
(a.) Conrad III. 

In the north-west dependency of Alb, within the present 
kingdom of Wirtemberg, on a lone mountain peak, which 
commands an extensive prospect, and is visible from a 
great distance, there is still standing a small portion of 
masonry, which is the only little relic of the ancient castle, 
where, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the powerful 
line of Hohenstaufen kept their residence. Frederic of 
Hohenstaufen had received from his father-in-law, who was 
the unhappy emperor Henry IV., the dukedom of Swabia ; 
and his two sons, relying on their royal affinity, sued for 
the imperial dignity after the demise of Henry V., but 
were superseded by Lotharius, duke of Saxony, A. D. 
1125-1137. But after his death, at the same time that 
Albert the Bear raised the marquisate of Brandenburg, the 
chief focus of the present Prussian territory, to power and 
influence, and the cities of Berlin and Vienna arose, Con- 
rad III., who hitherto had only been duke of Franconia, 
was raised to the imperial dignity in Germany. He was 
of the house of Hohenstaufen, a distinguished ruling family, 
under whose dominion Germany lived to witness her most 
illustrious period. Conrad's bitterest enemy was Henry 
the Proud, who was duke of Bavaria and Saxony, and 
son-in-law to the late emperor Lotharius. As Henry 
himself had earnestly sued for the imperial throne, and as 
he would not give up his two dukedoms in compliance with 
Conrad's desire, this emperor deprived him of both, and 
enfeoffed Albert the Bear with that of Saxony, and Leo- 
pold, margrave of Austria, with that of Bavaria. After 
Henry's death, his brother Guelph attempted to stand up 
for his rights, and attacked Conrad, but was defeated near 
Weinsberg, in Swabia. Things, however, came to such a 
pass, that Henry the Lion, son of Henry the Proud, re- 



198 HOUSE OF HOHENSTAUFEN. 

covered the dukedom of Saxony, in obtaining wbicli he 
was mainly assisted by the attachment of the Saxons them- 
selves. Conrad had also much trouble occasioned him by 
the factions in Italy, but was so prudent as not to mix 
himself up with any of them ; for his whole activity was 
sufficiently occupied in Germany itself. And yet the re- 
ligious notions of that age permitted him not to refuse an 
invitation to the next crusade, though he clearly saw that 
it would be far more advantageous to his own realm for 
him to remain at home, and though, on this very account, 
it was long before he could consent to take the cross. 

(b.) The Second Crusade. 

In Palestine, let it be observed, the Christian community 
of Jerusalem had meanwhile become considerably enlarged, 
and, as has been already noticed, the descendants of God- 
frey had hitherto kept themselves upon the throne. The 
Seldshuks, however, had now recovered from their defeats, 
and were in nowise inclined quietly to leave the posses- 
sion of the conquered country in the hands of the Chris- 
tians. The city of Edessa, where Boemund the Norman 
had, as early as in the year 1099, founded a separate 
Christian principality, was taken and destroyed by these 
Turks, in 1144, and the tidings of such a misfortune 
alarmed all Christendom in the West. As Peter of 
Amiens on the former occasion, so now Bernard of Clair- 
vaux, a man sincerely devout, but not superior to the su- 
perstition of his times, actively itinerated from country to 
country, and preached up a new crusade. He pledged 
himself for the safety of the undertaking, assured his hear- 
ers that it would have a happy issue, and promised to all 
who should share in it the full remission of their sins. 
His animated address persuaded Lewis VII. of France, 
together with a great retinue of his nobles and their depend- 
ents, to undertake a new crusade. He found it less easy to 
prevail upon the emperor Conrad III., who for a long 



HOUSE OF HOHENSTAUFEN. 199 

time parried him off; but, ultimately, at Spires, yielded to 
his persuasions, and consented to unite in the enterprise. 
In the year 1147, the Germans marched, amid a variety 
of perils, through Hungary to Constantinople and Lesser 
Asia : but the treachery of the Greeks, and the peculiar 
mode of warfare practiced by hosts of enemies, who hovered 
continually upon their march, and at length fell upon them 
by surprise, proved the destruction of almost their whole 
army ; so that, of seventy thousand strong and well-armed 
men, only the tenth part escaped back to Constantinople, 
and from thence put to sea for Palestine. Here the Ger- 
mans found King Lewis of France, with the remnant of 
his army, that had been put to as great extremities as 
themselves ; and both armies now marched in combination 
to Damascus, which they besieged for a long time, and to 
no purpose. Disunion among their various leaders — a 
thing which in the first crusade, as indeed in all the suc- 
ceeding ones, either weakened or quite frustrated every 
undertaking — was the chief occasion of their present ill 
success. Hence both these princes despaired of effecting 
anything, and returned to their respective governments in 
Europe, where their presence was very much needed. 
Conrad III. died three years afterward, A. D. 1152. 

(c.) Frederic I. and the Third Crusade. 

Conrad was succeeded by his brother's son, Frederic I., 
surnamed Red Beard, (Barbarossa,) one of the greatest 
German emperors, if w^e measure him by the standard of 
those times. His whole reign was almost one uninter- 
mitted struggle against the Papal claims, and against the 
Guelphic party, who sided with the pope. Yet he volun- 
tarily gave back to Henry the Lion the two dukedoms of 
Saxony and Bavaria, which Henry's father had possessed ; 
and, at the same time, he released the margraviate of Aus- 
tria from fealty to himself, and made it an independent 
dukedom, but received very poor thanks for his liberality. 



200 HOUSE OF HOHENSTAUFEN. 

The greatest part of his time was necessarily spent in 
quieting the insurgent cities of Upper Italy, among which 
Milan was the most powerful ; hence he could not do so 
much for his German kingdom as his own love of justice 
and order, and his power at ascending the throne, might 
have warranted his subjects to expect. His first expedi- 
tion into Italy was made in the year 1154, upon which 
occasion he adjusted differences at Rome between the pope 
and the people ; the latter having been stirred up by Ar- 
nold of Brescia, a vehement and influential opposer of 
priestcraft and Papal domination. Frederic had the cru- 
elty to sentence Arnold to be burnt alive. The authority 
of the pope had at that time risen so high, that the great 
emperor himself condescended to hold the pope's stirrup 
while he mounted his horse. The humiliation of the one, 
and the exaltation of the other, can only be accounted for 
from the rude and superstitious notions of the age. The 
Milanese had insolently offended their sovereign the em- 
peror, when he was upon this occasion in Italy ; and four 
years afterward, Frederic came the second time, to chas- 
tise their disloyalty. When he had taken and destroyed 
the city of Crema, which had heroically defended itself, 
Milan, also, in 1162, after an obstinate resistance, was 
compelled to yield. The inhabitants were forced to leave 
the place, and the city was razed to the ground. This 
brought a panic upon the cities of Lombardy ; and they, 
from mere weakness, were constrained for a time to be 
quiet. But when, after the death of Pope Hadrian, two 
popes were elected, namely, Alexander III. and Victor III., 
the latter of whom was supported by the emperor ; then 
Hadrian stirred up afresh against Frederic the malcontent 
cities of Lombardy, and, in the year 1166, the emperor 
had to march again into Italy. He now took Rome by 
storm, and obliged Pope Alexander to fly; but, in the 
midst of victory, his army was suddenly seized with a pes- 
tilential malady, by which it was nearly annihilated. 



HOUSE OF HOHENSTAITFEN. 201 

Frederic hastened back in helplessness to Germany, and 
the cities of Lombardy hence revolted with only the more 
power and violence ; and though Frederic, in the year 
1174, returned thither with a great army, those strongly 
fortified cities held out against him, so that his most influ- 
ential vassal, Henry the Lion, as still feeling the sting of 
the old Guelphic grudge, deserted the army, and returned 
to Germany, though Frederic on his knees entreated him 
to remain with him. Frederic's prosperity appears from 
that moment to have left him. He was totally defeated 
by the Lombards in open battle, and obliged to sue for 
peace; a severe humiliation to the then most powerful 
prince in Christendom. He acknowledged Alexander as 
pope, he held the stirrup for him, and he then hastened to 
Germany to chastise the revolted Henry. This prince he 
stripped of all his dignities and fiefs, so that Henry was 
now obliged, on his knees, to ask pardon of Frederic, and 
thus underwent the same humiliation that Frederic had 
just before condescended to express to him. Frederic 
recognized with tears this divine retribution, and granted 
him his patrimonial dukedom of Brunswick and Liineburg, 
but banished him for seven years from Germany, his na- 
tive country. He fled to his father-in-law, the king of 
England, and became the ancestor of the present royal 
family of Great Britain. Frederic bestowed the dukedom 
of Bavaria as a fief upon Otho of Wittelsbach, the ancestor 
of the royal family of Bavaria, and the dukedom of Saxony 
on the count of Anhalt, the son of Albert the Bear. He 
concluded a treaty of peace at Constance with the cities 
of Lombardy, in 1183, and, by marrying his son Henry to 
Constantia, who was heiress to the kingdom of Naples, he 
obtained to his family the royal reversion of Naples and 
Sicily : he little imagined that this very possession would 
ultimately prove the ruin of his family ; even as Xerxes, 
when he conquered Macedonia, little thought that a prince 
of this small country would destroy his great empire. 
9* 



202 HOUSE OF HOHENSTAUFEN. 

Frederic liad attained his sixty-seventh year, when he 
became induced to enter upon a crusade. The spirited 
sultan, Saladin of Egypt, a very renowned warrior, had 
conquered Syria, Arabia, and at length also Jerusalem, in 
the year 1187. When the tidings of this mournful event 
reached Europe, all Christendom was panic-struck. The 
pope died of vexation, and his successor issued the most 
pressing summons to all the Christian princes and people 
of the West, to arm for renewed war against the infidels. 
Even Frederic could not resist this appeal. He was, ac- 
cording to the standard of the times, a pious man, and 
certainly had much respect for sacred things. With a 
great army he reached Asia Minor, amidst the same toils 
and hardships as his predecessors, and after experiencing 
the same treacherous conduct on the part of the Greek 
emperor. An immense host of three hundred thousand 
Turks was, notwithstanding, defeated, and quite put to the 
rout by the fatigued and harassed crusaders ; who, following 
Frederic's example, had encouraged one another by prayer. 
He now pushed forward at the head of his army as far as 
the river Cydnus,* when, in attempting to swim on horse- 
back across the swollen river, he was carried down by the 
stream and drowned. Then was it most convincingly seen 
with what love and esteem the Germans were attached to 
him. They deplored his loss as that of a father, and the 
event soon showed that he had been the main pillar of the 
whole enterprise. For though his son Frederic conducted 
the army further on their march, yet disorder, sickness, 
and other misfortunes, now wasted it away, so that the dis- 
pirited remnant, after their leader had sunk under disease, 
hasted back to Germany. Another crusade, undertaken 
in that same year by Richard Coeur de Lion of England 
and Philip Augustus of France, found no better success ; 
inasmuch as its various leaders imprudently strove with 

* Or rather, the river Calycarlnns. — Trans. 



HOUSE OF HOHENSTAUFEN. 203 

each otlier for precedency, for possession of any conquered 
place, and for other secondary matters, and did not power- 
fully co-operate. Saladin, however, out of respect for the 
valor of Richard, granted a three years' truce, with leave 
tor pilgrims to visit Jerusalem. 

(d.) Henry VI. and Frederic 11. 

Frederic Barbarossa was succeeded by his son Henry VI., 
an inhuman character, and the only one who was a dis- 
grace to the house of Hohenstaufen. He spent his life 
principally in Naples and Sicily, the hereditary dominions 
of his consort, where he was reluctantly acknowledged as 
king, and where he established his authority by barbarous 
and tyrannical measures. His subjects thanked God for 
his death, which took place in the year 1197. 

He left behind him a son, four years of age, who is well 
known in history by the name of Frederic II. This prince 
was acknowledged at Naples as heir to the crown ; but, in 
Germany, duke Philip of Swabia, and Otho IV., tlie son 
of Henry the Lion, contended for the empire : and when 
the former of these was assassinated, and the latter at va- 
riance with Innocent HI., one of the most powerful popes, 
this pontiff contrived to get Frederic II. elected, at four- 
teen years of age, as emperor of Germany. Innocent, 
however, was by and by desirous that Frederic should 
leave the government of his territories in Italy to the hands 
of his son Henry, in the hope probably of bringing them 
to disunion and disagreement, and of thus weakening their 
power. At the same time, he seems to have apprehended 
some detriment to the Papal authority, from the active and 
high spirit of Frederic, and therefore he laid on him the 
obligation of a crusade to Palestine. Frederic, however, 
Avas by no means inclined to regard himself as a client of 
the pope, but put off the crusade as long as he could, and 
found it more convenient to reside in the beautiful southern 
country of Naples, than in the ruder and northern country 



20^ HOUSE OF HOHENSTAUFEN. 

of Germany. Hence he managed to have his son Henry 
elected German emperor, and got himself crowned king 
of the Romans by the pope. Innocent would hardly have 
given liim his way in this matter, but he had died before 
these measures were urged, and the more pacific Ho- 
norius HI. had succeeded to the Papal chair. This pope, 
indeed, reminded the emperor continually of his promise, 
and threatened him at last with the ban of excommunica- 
tion. The emperor, however, who had no longing desire 
for Jerusalem, was not to be intimidated into compliance ; 
but Gregory IX., the succeeding pope, by the decisive line 
of conduct which he set out with, and persevered in, pre- 
vailed at length upon him, in the year 1227, to depart with 
an army for Palestine ; where he not only arrived, but 
even regained, by a treaty with the sultan of the Saracens, 
both Jerusalem and other places accounted sacred, and re- 
placed them in the hands of the Christians. He put upon 
his own head the crown of Jerusalem, to which he was 
considered as having just claim by affinity ; and hence it 
is, that the subsequent German emperors have always been 
titular kings of Jerusalem. But, on his return to Italy, 
new troubles awaited him. The cities of Lombardy that 
remained affected to the Guelphic interest had revolted 
from him at the instigation of the pope; and their cause 
was even espoused by his OAvn son Henry, the ruling 
sovereign of Germany. Frederic hastened to Germany, 
deposed his son Henry, and caused his second son, Con- 
rad IV., to be elected in his stead. He also married at 
Cologne a second wife, who was a sister of the king of 
England ; and he held a great diet at Mayence, on which 
occasion many wise and beneficial arrangements, designed 
for the pacification of Germany, were concerted and settled. 
He next subdued the cities of Lombardy ; but here he al- 
lowed his prosperity to seduce him to the adoption of harsh 
measures, by which he once more so stirred up the pope 
against him, that he was a second time threatened with the 



HOUSE OP HOHENSTAUFEN. 205 

ban of excommunication. Henceforth his life was one 
perpetual and violent struggle with the Papacy. In Ger- 
many were Henry Raspe, landgrave of Thuringia, and 
Count William of Holland, set up as his rivals ; his nearest 
friends were either forced from him, or proved unfaithful 
to him ; all his attempts at reconcihation with the pope 
were treated as abortive ; and only his death, in 1250, put 
an end to these his painful difficulties. 

(e.) Conrad IV. and Conradin. 

Conrad IV. had also to endure the curse of the Papal 
ban, (2 Pet. ii, 10, 11,) and died in 1254, by poison, 
said to have been administered to him by his half-brother, 
Manfred. His son, Conradin, the last branch of the Hohen- 
staufen family, yet survived, but at his father's death he 
was only two years of age, and was carefully educated in 
Germany. For him, as the rightful heir of Naples and 
Sicily, as also of the dukedoms of Swabia, Franconia, and 
Alsace, the government of Lower Italy was conducted by 
Manfred, whom the pope stoutly opposed, having now de- 
termined once for all to expel the house of Hohenstaufen 
from their possession of Italy. He actually offered their 
territory to several princes, and at length found Charles 
of Anjou, the brother of Louis IX. of France, inclined to 
accept his proposals. With a well-appointed army this 
prince marched into the territory, and by a battle near 
Benevento, A. D. 1266, in which Manfred was defeated 
and slain, the allotment of these possessions was decided. 
One more attempt was made, and this by Conradin himself 
while yet a youth, to recover his hereditary dominions ; but 
he was vanquished, and taken prisoner at the battle of 
Tagliacozzo, in 1266, and, with his friend Frederic of 
Austria, was publicly executed. Thus the house of Ho- 
henstaufen became extinct, to which Germany had been 
indebted for her greatest emperors. This family may truly 
be said to have sunk under the violence of the pope's en- 



206 HOUSE OF HOHENSTAUFEN. 

mity, but not until it liad fulfilled its destination of effectu- 
ally making head against the grasping and boundless 
ambition of the Papal power in a dark and superstitious 
age. How far the individual emperors of this family w^ere 
conscious that they were fulfilling that divine commission, 
we know not; but general history is more immediately 
concerned with the facts themselves, and with the plan 
which God has accomplished by the instruments of his 
government, who are often as unconcerned about the 
divine proceedings, as they are intent upon the fulfillment 
of their own. 

(f.) Literatnre, and the Cliurcli. "" 

Under the patronage of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, 
mental cultivation in the West received a new impulse and 
new direction, and the powerful movements and inven- 
tions that changed the aspect of the political w^orld, affected 
also each department of science, art, and ordinary life. 
While among the disciples of the schoolmen, in France 
and England, such as Anselm of Canterbury, who died in 
1109, Abelard, (d. 1149,) Thomas Aquinas, (d. 1274,) 
Duns Scotus, (d. 1308,) and several others, the Greek 
philosophy was blended with Christianity, and the doctrines 
of the church were defended by intellectual subtilties ; 
even the fine arts seem also to have entered into a special 
covenant with Christianity. Thus the poesy of romantic 
fiction, by the troubadours in the south of France and in 
Italy, the amatory or Swabian poets of Germany, (among 
w^liom were some of the house of Hohenstaufen itself,) and 
the minstrels in England, was brought into existence. 
Hence, likewise, originated the architecture which is styled 
Gothic ; and which is so magnificently displayed in the 
cathedral structures of Strasburg, Cologne, Friburg, Vi- 
enna, York, Canterbury, Westminster, &c. The poetry 
of romantic fiction flourished also about the same period in 
the more northern countries of Europe, and likewise in 



HOUSE OF HOHENSTAUFEN. 207 

Spain. In the former of these, it may be traced to the 
struggle between declining paganism and rising Chris- 
tianity ; and, in the latter country, it was called forth by 
opposition to the Mohammedan religion and power. 

At that period, also, Persian poetry began to flourish ; 
for it was the age of Ansari, Ferdusi, Sadi, and others. 
Moreover, among the dispersed Jews there arose, in those 
times, such learned men as had not appeared among that 
people ever since their dispersion. And even in the church 
itself there seemed to be stirring a kind of new life, which 
would, in all probability, have been attended with still 
more important effects, had it not been suppressed by 
force. In the valleys of the south of France, where it 
borders upon Italy, Christian individuals and churches 
were still subsisting from early times, who, from the place 
of their abode, were called the people of the valleys, the 
Valenses, or Waldenses, and who protested against Papal 
church government, as also against the abuses and mere 
human dogmas that had forced their way into the church. 
They regarded the word of God as the only rule of faith, 
and were so governed by it in their habits of life, that their 
most inveterate enemies could not but concede their favor- 
able testimony to them in this particular. These Chris- 
tians rallied around like-minded worthies of that period, 
such as Peter and Henry de Bruys, 1104-1148, and Peter 
Waldo, who lived about the year 1170, by whose assist- 
ance they were from time to time revived and encouraged. 
Also a number of other sects, as the Cathari, the Albi- 
genses, the Lollards, &c., who either joined them, or were 
confounded with them, had, at least, one feature in com- 
mon with them, that they were opposed to priestly domina- 
tion and Popery. This, however, after their numbers had 
considerably increased, and they had come forward more 
openly with the confession of their faith, provoked the ve- 
hement opposition of the popes, who dreaded no heresy so 
much as that of doubting the la^vfulness of their supremacy. 



208 HOUSE OF HOHENSTAUFEN. 

But the severe decrees of the popes against these heretics, 
as they were called, and against their writings, availed as 
little as did the crusade which the same persecuting power 
sent against them for their annihilation, and in which they 
were indeed most inhumanly treated and massacred by 
thousands. Still the most effectual instrument of their de- 
struction was the Inquisition, which seems to deserve the 
epithet infernal, and which arose out of a similar dissatis- 
faction with the dominant church. The monasteries, by 
their strict discipline and simple manner of life, had proved, 
at first, an obstacle to those worldly and licentious habits 
that had crept into the church ; but they soon proved an 
unequal barrier against such growing corruptions ; indeed, 
a great many of them had already become the abodes of 
luxury and vice. Men of a serious cast, who lamented 
this falling av/ay, and who, from being unacquainted with 
the only real means of purification, namely, the word of 
God, looked for salvation and renewal in self-imposed 
severities and in exterior sanctity, thought they could best 
aid the church in this emergency by forming new monas- 
tic orders, each of which was to observe a strict rule of 
discipline of its own ; and these institutions they designed, 
on the one hand, should give opportunity for penitential 
amends, and for quiet seclusion from the world to those 
who were tired of its follies ; and, on the other, produce 
some beneficial effect upon fallen Christendom by their 
examples of holy living, and by serious admonition and 
exhortation. Thus originated those strict monastic orders, 
the Carthusians in 1084, the Cistercians in 1098, the Pre- 
monstrants in 1120, the Carmelites in 1156, the Francis- 
cans in 1210, and the Dominicans in 1 216. These, at least 
at their commencement, formed a severe opposition to the 
corrupt spirit of the times ; but through their servility of 
attachment to the Papal interests, they only tended, at 
length, to foster the same corrupt spirit in another manner. 
Hence the two orders last mentioned soon fell into the 



TERMINATION AND ISSUE OF THE CRUSADES. 209 

same errors which they were originally set up to correct : 
and, if we reflect how much mischief has been done by the 
Dominican order alone, we can hardly continue in doubt 
whether its rise has been for good or for evil. The founder 
of the Dominicans itinerated for ten years together among 
the martial Albigenses, and endeavored to convert them 
to the Romish Church ; but his endeavors were of little 
avail. After his death, however, the pope instituted the 
Inquisition, as a court for the trial of heretics, and in 1233 
committed the whole business of it to the Dominican order. 
This court, from whose inquisitorial authority neither birth, 
nor age, nor wealth, nor learning, nor power, nor honesty, 
was any protection, has both privately and publicly put to 
death many thousands of persons, and has proved itself 
the highest triumph of tyrannical wickedness, and the 
foulest blot in the history of man. In later times it has 
exercised its influence more pai'ticularly in Spain. Heresy 
was by its means almost entirely extirpated in France ; 
and every attempt to raise the sunken church, to curtail 
its extravagances, and to prune its excrescences, was 
choked in the birth by the vigilance of that institution. 

X.— TERMINATION AND ISSUE OF THE 
CRUSADES. 

In all the above-mentioned phenomena of this period, 
the influence of the crusades, which terminated with the 
thirteenth century, can hardly fail to be discerned. The 
enthusiastic zeal had cooled, which at the beginning of 
this century had fired a host of forty thousand people of 
Germany and France, to undertake an expedition of con- 
quest to Jerusalem. After Louis IX, of France, who is 
still called Saint Louis, had, in 1240, made a fruitless at- 
tempt in Egypt to assail the Turkish power, and force it 
to give up Jerusalem, one city after another fell into the 
hands of the Turks, till at length Ptolemais, (Acre,) the 
last of them, was surrendered in 1291, and herewith ter- 



210 TERMINATION AND ISSUE OF THE CRUSADES. 

minated those crusades which had been carried on for two 
centuries. 

The most immediate and largest amount of profit by the 
crusades resulted to the great Italian merchant cities, such 
as Pisa, Genoa, Venice, etc., which had taken a lively and 
active part in those expeditions, and in this way had opened 
and availed themselves of a variety of commercial connec- 
tions with the East, to enliven their own traffic. This was 
afterward shared by the German cities, whose trade com- 
municated with the East through Augsburg ; France also 
trafficked in the same way through Marseilles; and, in 
later times, England did the same. New commodities and 
valuables, which in the West had hitherto been little known, 
or quite unknown, were brought from India, Persia, and 
other oriental countries to the European market; they 
created new wants, and subserved the awakening of indus- 
try, and increasing refinement. Hereby, at least in one 
respect, the cultivation of the West was promoted. As, 
in the Macedo- Grecian period of antiquity, the Grecian 
taste combined itself with eastern luxury ; so the vigorous 
but rude manners of the West acquired, through the cru- 
sades, a more polished cast, though they received with it 
many a seed of moral depravity. At this period, likewise, 
an important advance was made toward the development 
of the middle rank of society, and thus to the filling up of 
that wide chasm which had hitherto existed between the 
higher and the lower classes. Every serf that took the 
cross for Palestine, by his so doing was declared free, and 
opportunities of the kind were readily seized by very 
many. Again, many a possessor of serfs had spent all 
his wealth upon a crusade, and, at his return from the 
Holy Land, was readily induced to manumit, for a small 
consideration, his dependents ; who, meanwhile, had raised 
some little property by their own earnings. The cities 
and towns had become wealthier, through buying up the 
estates of extinct families, as well as through the spread 



TERMINATION AND ISSUE OF THE CRUSADES. 211 

of commerce ; thus the burghers, or middle classes, had 
acquired more power and influence, became better skilled 
in trade and business, and the arts and sciences were ren- 
dered more than ever the common property of all ranks. 
But though men's scope was thus enlarged, and the human 
understanding had received a greater enlightening in 
earthly things, still the lordship over conscience which the 
church exercised was in no respect diminished ; and man's 
judgment concerning spiritual things still remained in the 
trammels of superstition. Tlie church had for her own 
worldly interest stirred up and promoted the crusades ; 
and in this respect she reaped from them no small advan- 
tage. Superstitious reverence for visible sanctuaries had 
drawn the ignorant Europeans into the East; and even 
their many repeated disappointments proved insufficient 
to open their eyes to the vanity of their attempts. For as 
men had hitherto yielded their whole minds to the desire 
of visiting sacred spots in the Holy Land, so the clergy 
now provided, by the spread of innumerable relics, that 
this superstition should be everywhere cherished and up- 
held. Every successful issue was placed by the church 
to her own account, while every unfortunate event was 
interpreted as a divine chastisement for disobedience to her 
authority, and thus was rendered subservient to the sup- 
port of ecclesiastical influence. The invisible chief of all 
the crusades was the pope himself; every such expedition 
was specially designed by him for the extension of his own 
influence ; and he considered himself sufficiently indemni- 
fied for all losses in the East, by the terror which, through 
ban and interdict, he was enabled to diffuse in the West, 
so as to increase his tyranny over the minds of men. If 
the cities were aggrandized by the occupation of escheated 
estates, the abbeys and other ecclesiastical establishments 
were not behind them in this respect, but extended their 
power, partly by having presents and legacies bestowed 
upon them, and partly by making very considerable addi- 



212 TERMINATION AND ISSUE OF THE CRUSADES. 

tional purchases of land. Nevertheless, at the very time 
when princes and nobles, cities and burghers, were trying 
their strength against the swords of the Saracens, their 
weakness, on the contrary, was rendered more and more 
manifest by the power of the clergy ; and this because they 
knew not how to wield the weapons of the Spirit and of 
the word of God : and while brave warriors were spending 
their blood for the " holy cross " in the East, the Inquisi- 
tion was raging with unbounded tyranny among their fami- 
lies and friends in the West. 

One of the most striking characteristics of this period 
was men's ignorance in the administration of justice. Nei- 
ther of the two digests of the Germanic laws, the one en- 
titled " The Saxon Mirror," and compiled in the year 1215, 
and the other " The Swabian Mirror," compiled in 1255, 
nor the Justinian Code, to which time had given the pre- 
cedency, nor the peace enactments of powerful German 
emperors, were found adequate to maintain civil rights, or 
to prevent numberless private feuds that endangered the 
public safety. The fist-right, or decision of quarrels by 
battle, had become, especially in the period that followed 
the extinction of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, more and more 
prevalent ; and even those secret tribunals of criminal jus- 
tice that were called Fehm courts, which originated in West- 
phalia, were inadequate to the prevention of violence. 
They soon themselves degenerated into violence of the 
worst kind. By the fist-law, or right of private warfare, 
the safety of the roads, and consequently of all traffic and 
business, was very much disturbed, while gangs of plun- 
dei-ing knights lurked everywhere about the highways to 
pillage travelers going to and from the markets : hence, 
at the close of this period, several towns in the north of 
Germany formed among themselves a league for mutual 
protection, which soon gained so many members, and such 
consoUdation and influence, that it raised and kept a stand- 
ing army of its own. For even the nobles had become 



INDEPENDENT GOVERNMENTS. 213 

impoverished, in proportion as the towns increased in 
wealth ; and as the former looked with invidious eye upon 
t-he treasures of the wealthy burghers, so the latter knew 
of no means of protection against their seizures and rav- 
ages, except such a union among themselves. This union 
was called Hansa, (which signifies associatioji, or league,) 
whence the towns that were taken into it were called Hanse 
towns. Liibeck, Hamburg, Bremen, Stettin, Dantzig, and 
Konigsberg, were among their number. Another confede- 
ration of cities on the Rhine was formed for the same ob- 
ject, but it never acquired such importance as the pre- 
ceding. 

The liistory of the German empire at that period may 
be regarded as the focus of history in general, and is there- 
fore treated here with more attention and particularity than 
that of other sovereignties. Not only was the German 
sovereign regarded as the supreme temporal head of 
western Christendom, (inasmuch as he wore the Roman 
imperial crown,) but he was also most to be feared by the 
Papacy ; and the conflict between the temporal and the 
spiritual power is the most conspicuous and important fea- 
ture of the middle ages, and all other events of those times 
appear more or less connected with it. This being pre- 
mised, we proceed to take a cursory glance at the history 
of that period, as it respects the countries which border 
upon the German empire. 

XL— HISTORY OF INDEPENDENT GOVERNMENTS 
AT THIS PERIOD. 

In England the male line of William the Conqueror had 
become extinct at the demise of his son Henry I., who 
was succeeded, in the year 1154, by his grandson Henry 
II. This prince possessed, by inheritance, a large part 
of France, namely, the county of Anjou, with the duke- 
dom of Normandy, and also Guienne and Poitou ; and 
added Ireland to his dominions by conquest, in the year 



214 INDEPENDENT GOVERNMENTS 

1167. Thus, if great power enjoyed by a prince at the 
commencement of his reign were any pledge of his future 
success, Henry XL of England would not have been with- 
out jjrosperity for the rest of his life. But, as King Da- 
vid, after triumphantly vanquisliing his enemies, had to 
experience the keenest sorrow from his own sons ; and as 
Augustus, in the plenitude of his imperial power, met with 
nothing but unhappiness in his own family, so was the 
reign of Henry IL, at least in the last years of it, a tragical 
history indeed, and what he, by his matrimonial unfaith- 
fulness and his other faults, had been guilty of, he had to 
suffer for in full measure, and to a most painful degree. 
He had imprudently lavished favors upon his youngest son 
John, having preferred liim to the elder brothers; and 
thus incensed them to rancorous hatred and unnatural op- 
position against himself, their own father. Like David, 
he had the unhappiness of being obliged to go out to war 
against his own offspring ; and when, at last, even John 
most ungratefully deserted his interests, he died of grief, 
and bequeathed to his sons that curse which failed not to 
overtake them. The eldest of them, Richard Coeur de 
Lion, who succeeded him in the throne, engaged in a cru- 
sade to the Holy Land, in 1189, with Philip Augustus, 
the king of France. Li this crusade he achieved wonders 
of personal valor; but as his ambitious pretensions disu- 
nited him from his royal companions in the war, he failed 
of effecting anything of importance. Without reaching 
Jerusalem he was constrained to leave Palestine ; and, on 
his return home through Germany, he was taken prisoner 
by Leopold, duke of Austria, whom he had bitterly offended 
in the East, and was kept in close confinement for more 
than a year by the emperor Henry VI. At length, by 
the pope's mediation, he regained his liberty, forgave his 
brother John, who meanwhile had attempted to seize the 
crown, and died soon after, in 1199, by an arrow in a war 
with France. Neither did John escape divine rebuke. 



AT THIS PERIOD. 215 

He indeed succeeded to the throne after Richard's death, 
but became embroiled in perpetual quarrels with the clergy 
and with his haughty vassals, and demeaned himself so far 
as to take his kingdom as a fief of the pope. He was 
forced to grant the famous Magna Charta, the foundation 
of English liberties ; and, after a turbulent reign of seven- 
teen years, he was driven from his dominions by his re- 
bellious subjects, and died on his flight to North Britain ; 
Avhence he was also called John Lackland. In the reign 
of his son, Henry HI., 1216-1272, the country was deso- 
lated by bands of robbers and by civil wars ; and Edward 
I., Henry's successor, had enough to do to restore things 
in some degree to better order. 

France was still governed by the family of the Capetian 
monarchs, from A. D. 987 to 1328, who meantime had 
many contests with their most powerful vassals, the suc- 
cessive dukes of Normandy. Political government, in that 
kingdom, proceeded chiefly upon the principle of oneness 
and compactness ; subservient to which was the settlement, 
that the crown was hereditary : and the exertions of the 
French monarchs gradually to get into their own hands all 
the feudal tenures, and to put an end to vassalage, were 
made for the purpose of acting out that principle. These 
exertions succeeded, after a long struggle of opposition 
against them, so that France became an absolute monarchy, 
by all its vassals having, by little and little, been brought 
to give up their domains into the immediate possession of 
the crown. Germany proceeded in an opposite direction. 
While, by its constitution, the imperial dignity was no 
very strict bond of union to a diversity of interests, and 
only those of its emperors who were of a firm and resolute 
character had the skill to keep a tighter rein, all circum- 
stances contributed to form the distribution of the empire 
into something which became more decided than the 
general uniformity of character belonging both to terri- 
tory and people might have warranted us to expect, and 



216 INDEPENDENT GOVERNMENTS 

to render the feudal tenants more and more fixed and 
independent in their possessions. 

Philip Augustus, king of France, A. D. 1180-1223, 
the same who had crusaded to Palestine with Richard Coeur 
de Lion, had already taken one important step toward the 
establishment of absolute monarchy in his dominions. 
While King John of England was occupied with his troubles 
at home, all his possessions in France were openly seized 
by Philip Augustus ; and thus Touraine, Maine, Anjou, 
Normandy, and Poitou came into the possession of the 
kings of France; and Louis IX., A. D. 1226-1270, 
gained, in addition to these, the dominions of Toulouse 
and Provence. Louis IX., who is also called St. Louis, 
whose name has been mentioned already in our notice of 
the crusades, was a pious man, of excellent qualities, mild 
and placable, serious and firm. His piety indeed was 
expressed, according to the ideas of those times, in extreme 
abstinence, frequency at mass, severe mortifications, and 
superstitious reverence for things of exterior sanctity, as 
shrines and relics ; still his piety was not merely exterior, 
but proceeded from his heart. Hence it is the more re- 
markable, that with all his devotedness to the Romish 
Church, he made the most decided opposition to her de- 
mands, whenever his conscience did not approve of them. 
It was likewise an honest, though mistaken zeal, which 
induced him to enter upon a crusade to Palestine, at the 
time that Jerusalem was retaken by the Mohammedans, in 
1244. He had indeed the misfortune to be taken prisoner 
while in Egypt ; but even there he so retained his Chris- 
tian constancy, that the very Mohammedans learned to 
reverence him. The ill success of this crusade did not 
deter him from undertaking a second, in which he laid 
siege to Tunis, and died before that city, in 1270, aged 
fifty-five years. His last words were those of the Psalmist : 
" Lord ! I will enter into thine house : I will worship in 
thy holy temple, and give glory to thy name." 



AT THIS PERIOD. 217 

Of a very different character was King Philip IV., sur- 
named The Fair, who reigned from 1285 to 1314. He 
concerned himself entirely about confirming his power, 
and increasing his wealth ; and to this object he made 
everything subservient, whether sacred or profane. He 
imposed taxes upon the clergy, from which they had 
hitherto been exempt, and hereby incurred a long and 
violent contest with Pope Boniface VIII., who, at last, 
even excommunicated him, by which, however, this 
audacious monarch was not at all daunted. On the 
contrary, he employed an emissary to treat the pope with 
such contempt and personal violence, and this at the 
pope's own residence, that the pontiff, from vexation and 
grief, became insane, and dashed his own brains out against 
the wall. The succeeding pope, Clement V., was even 
compelled to fix his residence at Avignon. Also Philip 
left an indelible stain upon his character, as one of the 
most inhuman of tyrants, by his cruel massacre and extir- 
pation of the whole order of Knights Templars, whom he 
had indiscriminately charged with the most abominable 
crimes. Divine rebuke "lingered not." He died soon 
after. And, within fourteen years from his own death, his 
three sons, who succeeded to his throne, were all dead 
likewise ; and with them the direct male line of the Cape- 
tian monarchs became extinct, A. D. 1328. 

In Spain, since the year 756, the Saracen dynasty of 
the Ommiades had flourished at Cordova, and had taken 
a lively interest in promoting the arts and sciences in the 
East ; so that, in the tenth century, even European Chris- 
tians studied at that Arabian seat of learning. But 
against that dynasty had arisen, as their formidable rivals, 
the Christian kingdoms of Castile and Arragon, whose 
monarchs, in the thirteenth century, conquered the Arabian 
dominions of Murcia, Valencia, Majorca, and Minorca. 
Sicily, also, where, on the occasion that is called the Sicilian 
Vespers, in 1282, all that had come thither with Charles 
10 



218 INDEPENDENT GOVERNMENTS 

of Anjou were massacred, came into the hands of King 
Peter of Arragon, who was related to the house of Hohen- 
staufen. Cordova, Seville, and Cadiz were ultimately 
united to the kingdom of Castile ; and the king of Grenada, 
the only then remaining Mohammedan ruler in Spain, be- 
came tributary to the Castilian king, Alphonso. In the 
same period, A. D. 1139, was also formed the Christian 
kingdom of Portugal. 

The Greek empire at Constantinople had much to endure 
at this period from the incessant pressure of rude Asiatic 
hordes of invaders • and, during the continuance of the cru- 
sades, it was little more than a scene of desolating armies 
passing and repassing, and of numberless conflicts between 
the Christians and the Turks. In the year 1204 there was 
what may properly be called a Latin empire set up at 
Constantinople by the crusaders ; and it was not till 1261 
that it merged back into that of the Greek imperial family 
of the Comneni, who for a time had kept their residence at 
Trebisond and Nicaea. 

At the beginning of the thirteenth century, a swarm of 
powerful and barbarous tribes pressed in upon that empire; 
a people who up to this period had been out of the limits 
of national historical notice, but had now become so for- 
midable as to threaten with desolation and renewed bar- 
barism the whole civilized East and West. These were the 
Moguls, who had conquered China, overthrown the caliph- 
ate of Bagdad, subdued Persia and Asia Minor, and, under 
the conduct of their intrepid leader Jengiskhan, had now 
overrun Armenia, and penetrated into Russia and Hun- 
gary. In 1240 they took Moscow and Kiew, deluged 
with their arms the countries of Servia, Bosnia, Illyria, 
and Dalmatia, and seized Poland. It w^as not till the 
battle of Liegnitz, in 1241, that the Moguls, though still 
victorious, learned to respect German warriors, by whose 
brave resistance they sustained very considerable losses ; 



AT THIS PERIOD. 219 

and finally, by the death of their great khan Oktai, did 
divine Providence effect the deliverance of the West. 

In Prussia, and in its north-eastern regions, there still 
remained, at the commencement of this period, the pagan 
tribes of the Lettes, (or Lettonians,) whose conversion to 
Christianity it was thought right, according to the rude 
notions of those times, to attempt with the sword. The 
emperor Frederic II. and pope Gregory IX. conferred on 
the Teutonic Knights the possession of all the country 
situated between the Vistula and Memel, on condition that 
they should introduce Christianity. Their consequent 
struggle with the pagan inhabitants, during fifty years, ex- 
tirpated nearly the whole population ; but having built 
Thorn, Culm, and other towns, they peopled them with 
German settlers : hence German laws and manners, toge- 
ther with the profession of the Chi'istian religion, obtained 
ascendency in that country ; and Marienburg became the 
chief residence of the Teutonic order in the year 1309. 

In Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, there was still a 
troublous ferment and continual struggle for political set- 
tlement, civil order, and recognition of the rights of the 
rising middle classes ; nor is it till the succeeding period 
that we find these kingdoms making a figure in history, as 
nations possessing a more tranquil condition. For even 
the political and intellectual formation of such cold coun- 
tries seemed, like the fruits of their fields and trees, to be 
the later in ripening the further north they were situated. 

Upon the death of Conrad IV., the last monarch of the 
Hohenstaufen family, there followed a considerable period 
of great disorder ; and the electoral princes, as if in their 
native country there was not another worthy to be found 
capable of wearing the imperial crown, venally proffered 
their votes to foreign princes. Thus some of those electors 
chose Richard, duke of Cornwall, brother of Henry IH. 
of England, and others Alphonso X. of Castile, to the 



220 HOUSE OF HAPSBURG. 

sovereignty of Germany. But as tlie former came among 
them but very seldom, and the latter never at all, and as 
two rival sovereigns of the same kingdom are equivalent 
to none, on account of their mutually destructive preten- 
sions, therefore the period of their neutralized reign, from 
1250 to 1272, is called the Interregnum. For, as properly 
they could not be said to reign at all, so the Jlst-right (the 
law of armed force, or right of private warfare) was 
sovereign during that interval. Each private individual, 
taking the law into his own hands, helped himself as well 
as he could : the weaker suffered, and the stronger were 
in perpetual feud with one another. Such a state of 
anarchy was found burdensome to all ; and, upon Richard's 
death, the people meditated the choice of some worthy 
sovereign, to whom they might look for the restoration of 
tranquillity and order 

XII.— THE HOUSE OF HAPSBURG. 

(a.) From Rudolph of Hapsburg to Albert I. 

From the summit of the Botzberg, in the northern Swiss 
canton of Aargau, the eye can command a whole group of 
objects of special interest to the historical inquirer. He 
beholds those two streams, the Limmat and the Reuss, 
joining the Aar at a little distance before its own junction 
with the Rhine ; also, in the foreground, the little town of 
Brugg with the neighboring ruined monastery of Konigs- 
felden, where the cell of Agnes, queen of Hungary, is still 
shown. Just by it, is the spot where the emperor Albert, 
her father, was murdered by his nephew, John of Swabia ; 
and near it, the place where stood the ancient Roman town 
of Vindonissa. Further on, old (Swiss) Baden, with its 
hot springs ; and, on a lofty eminence on the right bank 
of the Aar, about three miles above Brugg, the ruins of the 
ancient castle of Hapsburg. There are few places which, 
within so small a compass, retain so many great historical 



HOUSE OF HAPSBURG. 221 

reminiscences belonging to a course of centuries. The 
resident of Hapsburg, at this period, was Count Rudolph, 
whose domams were scattered about to a considerable dis- 
tance from the castle, and who was a person of high repu- 
tation for piety and justice, as well as for wisdom and 
valor. At the very time that he was engaged in a feud 
with the citizens of Basle, and had laid siege to their 
capital, a courier brought him the tidings that the assembled 
princes of Germany had elected him as their sovereign, 
and were waiting to crown him at Aix-la-Chapelle. Ru- 
dolph accepted their offer, and immediately hastened into 
Germany, though he was well aware that his new promo- 
tion would give him much trouble : for the oppressed among 
the Germans were now very clamorous for justice; and 
their oppressors, who, during the late period of anarchy 
and confusion, had acquired many a possession by unjust 
means, were not disposed to give back a particle of the 
plundered property. The universal prevalence of misrule 
could only be remedied by strong aggressive measures, and 
by the most resolute perseverance in their application; 
so that Rudolph could not promise himself any speedy ar- 
rival of easy and agreeable days. Nevertheless, he deter- 
muied, in good earnest, to put an end to this unsettled 
state of things, and trusted to the help of God for ability 
to accomplish it. 

The first to oppose this salutary design was King Ottocar, 
of Bohemia ; a country which had been hitherto considered 
as a fief of the Germanic empire. During the interregnum, 
this prince had seized, and added to his dominions, the 
dukedoms of Austria, Stiria, Carniolia, and Carinthia, and 
refused not only to give them up, but even to acknowledge 
Rudolph as his feudal lord. Rudolph, therefore, saw it 
necessary to invade his territory ; which he did with such 
surprise, that Ottocar was fain to supplicate for pardon, 
and to vow faithful allegiance. But in the year 1278, 
having violated his solemn engagements, he was attacked 



222 HOUSE OF HAPSBURG. 

once more. His troops were defeated, and he himself fell 
in battle as a sacrifice to his own perfidy and haughtiness. 
Rudolph was neither severe nor elated at victory. He 
treated his enemies with gentle magnanimity, and restored 
Ottocar's sons to their hereditary tenure of Bohemia as 
feudatory to the empire. His feudal grant of the vacated 
dukedom of Austria to his own sons, Albert and Rudolph, 
cannot well be termed injustice, if we take into considera- 
tion the circumstances of those times. The lawless period 
just gone by had sufficiently shown what an unsafe pledge 
of future tranquillity and good order were the position and 
state of the electoral body ; and Rudolph had considered 
that, to native German minds, it could appear nothing 
less than a degradation and disgrace for the Germanic 
people to have become the subjects of a foreigner. He, 
therefore, put forth every energy to give to the imperial 
succession more stability, and thereby insure to the empire 
at large more general order and security. No one loves 
to labor in vain ; but Rudolph felt that he should have to 
regard as in vain his unwearied labors for the restoration 
of tranquillity to the empire, if he should leave any occa- 
sion for apprehending that, after his decease, the unbridled 
arbitrariness of private individuals should again obtain the 
upper hand. His support, moreover, for the accomplish- 
ment of his pacific plans, so depended on the good will of 
the princes of the empire, while his own individual power 
was so inconsiderable by itself for any effectual check upon 
refractory vassals, that he found it necessary to devise out 
of his own resources, and to create out of his own family 
some check of a stronger kind. It was from the same well- 
concerted policy, that he also obtained the marriage of his 
three daughters to tjiree of the native princes of the em- 
pire. But with all this, he was unable to prevail upon 
the princes in general, so jealous were they for their 
elective rights, to promise the election of his son to the 
crown after his own demise. Nearly the whole term of 



HOUSE OF HAPSBURG. 223 

his reign, from 1273 to 1291, he had to contend with tur- 
bulent vassals, and especially with many plundering castled 
knights, who, sallying from their strong fortresses, fell upon 
whole towns and villages, made traveling perilous on the 
high roads, and kept civil life in continual broils. He de- 
stroyed many of their castles, and executed such of their 
possessors as made obstinate resistance. But he showed 
not so much lenity to all as he did to Count Everard of 
Wirtemberg, surnamed the Wrangler ; who carried for his 
motto, " God's friend, and all the ivorld's foe" and whose 
well-fortified city of Stuttgart he besieged. Yet even this 
prince would probably not have come off with such mo- 
derate treatment, had Rudolph's power itself been greater, 
and had there been less distraction from several other 
quarters. Rudolph, however, by his indefatigable ex- 
ertions, effected the revival of agriculture and commerce, 
and the recovery of general good order. He was so pru- 
dent as to dedicate his whole powers to this object, instead 
of suffering himself to be drawn aside into ruinous expe- 
ditions either to Italy or Palestine. Much rather did he 
prefer making some voluntary concessions to the pope, as 
in transferring to him Ravenna, Bologna, Urbino, and 
Spoleto. Thus we see that the period of vehement strug- 
gle between the imperial and Papal powers had ended 
with the extinction of the Hohenstaufen dynasty. Never- 
theless, in after times, the German emperors, and other 
Christian princes, resumed the formation of those barriers 
which the Papacy was never permitted to demolish, 
although it occasionally overstepped them. 

The Germanic princes, who considered their own pri- 
vate interests more than the general good of the empire, 
elected, after Rudolph's death. Count Adolphus of Nassau ; 
because from him, as being a poor and powerless knight, 
they had no ground for apprehending any danger to them- 
selves. This prince first lost all his credit by a long and 
unjust contention with the sons of Albert of Thuringia and 



224 HOUSE OF HAPSBURG. 

Misnia ; and then, after Albert of Austria had been elected 
to supersede him in the throne of the empire, Adolphus 
lost his life by contending with him, A. D. 1298. In his 
time, 1292, the dignity of landgrave was conferred upon 
Henry of Hessia. 

Albert was now left in undisputed possession of the em- 
pire, and reigned ten years, from 1298 to 1308 ; but if he 
followed his father in his policy of enlarging the territo- 
ries of the imperial family, for the purpose of establishing 
an extended and soUd basis to their power, yet was he 
mournfully deficient in the prudence, equity, and modera- 
tion with which Rudolph brought that policy into exercise. 
His thrift and love for increasing property degenerated 
into selfishness and avarice ; and these, in conjunction with 
the natural severity of his character, caused him to be dis- 
trusted and despised, involved him in many quarrels, and, 
at length, cost him his life. " They that will be rich fall 
into temptation and a snare ; for the love of money is the 
root of all evil." After having quarreled with the princes 
of the Rhine, and with the landgraves of Thuringia, namely, 
Frederic "with the bitten cheek," and Dietzmann, and 
having been defeated by the two latter near Altenburg, in 
1307, he sought to indemnify himself for his severe losses 
by turning his attention to Switzerland, where his original 
family estates were situated. These estates he wished to 
consolidate with every portion of freehold land that lay 
between them, and to vest the whole as an hereditary 
principality in his family. 

(b.) The Helvetic Confederation. 

Switzerland had long been regarded as a part of Ger- 
many: since the year 496 it had been subjected to the 
kings of the Frankish and Carlovingian race ; and, in the 
year 888, it was apportioned to the kingdom of Upper Bur- 
gundy. With Burgundy it became a portion of the Ger- 
manic empire, in 1032, but with special immunities, for 



HOUSE OF HAPSBURG. 225 

which it was indebted both to the natural fortification of 
its mountains and to the poverty of its inhabitants, as well 
as to other circumstances. Thus, for instance, the whole 
country consisted of many small and separate districts. 
The chief cities of every such district enjoyed, for the most 
part, a kind of independence of one another, after the man- 
ner of the free imperial towns of Germany. Between 
them lay the estates of individual nobles, among whom the 
counts of Savoy, of Kyburg, of Hapsburg, etc., were the 
most powerful. The inhabitants of the rude mountain dis- 
tricts, a fine-spirited, religiously disposed, and pastoral 
people, whose habits left no room for luxury, concerned 
themselves very little about what was proceeding in the 
world abroad ; and the authority of the Germanic empe- 
rors, to which, in the same manner as free imperial cities, 
they were immediately subject, was not felt as anything 
oppressive to them ; inasmuch as they were governed by 
their own native magistrates, and according to their own 
laws, which, both in their constitution and administration, 
conceded ample liberty to the mountaineer. Hence, and 
especially in the case of the three forest towns of Uri, 
Schwyz, and Unterwalden, which had hitherto been re- 
garded as belonging to the dukedom of Swabia, it was a 
double injustice that Albert endeavored to prevail with 
them to become subject to the house of Austria. This 
was injustice to the German imperial power, from whose 
immediate regency they were to be severed; and, of 
course, it was injustice enough to those cities and cantons 
themselves to take a step which tended so considerably to 
abridge them of their liberties. Now, because those three 
forest towns showed no desire to comply with Albert's 
proposals, but on the contrary requested him to grant them 
his ratification of their ancient rights, this imperial king 
had recourse at once to summary measures, and sent among 
them two Austrian governors, who shamefully treated this 
poor peasant population with haughtiness, insult, and inhu- 
10* 



226 HOUSE or hapsburg. 

man severity, till the latter could endure it no longer. 
Therefore, in the winter of 1307, thirty-three spirited and 
respectable men of the cantons above-mentioned bound 
themselves together by a vow, to seek the deliverance of 
their fatherland without any bloodshed or revolt : only it 
was insisted that the inhuman governors who had been 
forced upon them should, together with their subordinate 
officers, be expelled from the country. The assassination 
of the governor Gessler, by the Uri patriot, William Tell, 
whose feelings had been so outraged by him that he lost 
all patience, unexpectedly hastened the crisis, by giving 
the signal for a general eruption of the long-suppressed 
rancor. On new year's day, 1308, the castle of the other 
governor was surprised by the confederates, and he was 
taken and conducted by them in safety beyond the fron- 
tiers: a moderation which well deserves to be noticed, 
considering the rudeness and violence of the times, and the 
cruelty which this poor people had experienced from that 
governor ; indeed it can only be accounted for by the pre- 
vailing religious feelings of those simple mountaineers. 
The imperial Albert, when this news reached him, felt his 
wrath inflamed to the utmost. He immediately set off 
upon a march against them, under pretence of chastising 
two or three refractory forest towns, but in reality deter- 
mining to reduce the whole country to absolute subjection. 
Among liis attendants was his brother's son, John of Swa- 
bia, whom the deceased father had left to his guardianship, 
but whom Albert was now unjustly withholding from his 
paternal inheritance. This nephew, in revenge, murdered 
him by the way, near the conflux of the Reuss and the 
Aar, almost under the very walls of Hapsburg, their family 
castle. Thus fell Albert, a victim to his own insatiable 
avarice. His murderer fled, and was never more heard 
of. Hereupon the Swiss determined never to let go their 
dearly purchased freedom ; and, with a small army of four 
or five hundred men, they defeated, in 1315, an immense 



HOUSE OF HAPSBURG. 227 

host of the Austrians, in the pass of Morgarten, and estab- 
lished, in the same year, at Brunnen, what was called The 
Perpetual Confederacy, from which they were called The 
Confederates, and which was soon joined by several other 
Swiss cities and their cantons. 

(c.) From Henry VII. to Sigismund, 

Albert's immediate successor was Count Henry VII. of 
Luxemburg, who was crowned emperor at Rome, but 
died in 1313 ; in consequence of which there arose a long 
struggle between two competitors for the crown. These 
were Louis of Bavaria and Frederic of Austria, whose 
contest terminated in Frederic being taken prisoner, and 
in Louis's noble resolution, voluntarily to admit him to a 
participation in the government. Their joint reign con- 
tinued to the death of Frederic, which took place in 1330. 
During the reign of Louis, the struggle between the em- 
peror and the pope, the latter of whom had, since 1309, 
resided at Avignon, became again very active ; and it was 
only the glaring fact, that Philip IV. of France had the 
pope's person completely in his power, that weakened the 
impression of his arrogant pretensions and violent measures. 
Clement V., immediately after the death of Henry VIL, 
had not hesitated to assert that the Papal dignity was su- 
perior to that of the emperor; and his successor, John 
XXIL, in the year 1324, fulminated the ban of excom- 
munication against the emperor Louis. He also, some 
years afterward, put all Germany under an interdict, which 
required every church to be shut up, and all divine service 
to be suspended. This proceeding, however, did not ori- 
ginate entirely with the ecclesiastical interest; for the 
policy of the French monarchs, who desired the humilia- 
tion of Germany, had very much to do with it : the Ger- 
mans themselves viewed it in this light. However, at an 
imperial diet, held at Frankfort on the Maine, in 1338, 
they solemnly declared both the imperial dignity and the 



228 HOUSE OF HAPSBURG. 

elective choice of the electoral princes to be altogether in- 
dependent of the pope. Still the popes, again and again, 
thundered at Louis their bulls of excommunication ; whence 
it is easy to understand why, in his indignation, he re- 
nounced his respect for ecclesiastical authority, and took 
upon himself to grant divorces, and new marriage licenses 
to the divorced. Men of bold spirits, like Louis, can easily, 
in the heat of opposition, overstep the bounds of propriety. 
From Charles IV. of Bohemia, who by the intrigues of 
the pope had been set up as anti-emperor, Louis had 
nothing to apprehend; inasmuch as his own power, au- 
thority, and character, had become too well established to 
be shaken by him. 

This Charles IV., the king of Bohemia, being a grand- 
son of the emperor Henry VIL, whose son John had ob- 
tained the Bohemian crown by marriage, was, however, 
after the death of Louis, elected to succeed him, and was 
crowned emperor at Rome, in the year 1355. The policy 
inherited by the German sovereigns from Rudolph of 
Hapsburg, whose position required it, to avail themselves 
of every opportunity in their reign to estabUsh, consolidate, 
and enlarge their own imperial demesnes, was likewise the 
perpetual object of Charles. He united Silesia, and Lu- 
satia, as also the margraviate of Brandenburg, the last by 
purchase, to his own Bohemian dominions. He also con- 
trived to raise money for himself by elevating the condi- 
tion of the barons, counts, and princes, and by granting 
patents of nobility. But little as he may, in other respects, 
have had at heart the welfare of the German empire, he 
did a really meritorious service toward bringing it about, 
by means of what was called the Golden Bull, of 1356, 
the prime fundamental law of the Germanic empire. By 
this was conferred on the seven electoral princes, namely, 
those of Mayence, Treves, Cologne, Brandenburg, Saxony, 
Bohemia, and the Palatinate, the exclusive right of elect- 
ing the Germanic sovereign, with several other preroga- 



HOUSE OF HAPSBURG. 229 

tives connected therewith; such as that primogeniture 
should be the legitimate claim to each several electorate, 
and that electoral domains should never be subject to par- 
tition. It was also hereby ordained, that the German em- 
peror should always be elected at Frankfort, and crowned 
at Aix-la-Chapelle. Mayence and the Palatinate Avere to 
have the right of voting first on every such occasion. The 
electors of Mayence, Treves, and Cologne, as being like- 
wise archbishops, were denominated spiritual prince elec- 
tors. The succession to their dominions, inasmuch as it 
could not proceed by inheritance, remained, of course, un- 
der the influence of the popes, who hereby had very con- 
siderable weight in the election of the imperial sovereigns. 
The ducal provinces, both of Swabia and Franconia, hav- 
ing less political importance, had, since the extinction of 
the Hohenstaufen family, been occupied no longer by 
reigning dukes, but gradually became portioned out into 
small domains and town liberties. Thus the counts of 
Wirtemberg were continually gaining an increase of terri- 
tory in Swabia by purchase and force of arms ; so that, in 
process of time, the largest portion of what had been the 
dukedom of Swabia became appended to the dominions 
of this princely family. Bavaria was at this period no 
longer reckoned one of the principalities of Germany, nor 
was it till later times that it recovered its elevation to 
greater political importance, and to the electoral dignity. 

Charles IV. performed another meritorious service ; and 
this was to education and science, by founding, in 1348, 
the university of Prague. There already existed similar 
high schools at Paris and Bologna ; and the university of 
Heidelberg had been founded in 1339, though it did not 
receive its inauguration nor begin to act till 1386. The 
university of Prague had attained quite a flourishing con- 
dition in the time of John Huss ; but the same year in 
which it was founded, 1348, God himself addressed a peni- 
tential admonition to the whole population of Europe, by 



230 HOUSE OF HAPSBURG. 

a dreadful pestilence that spread from the Levant, and 
swept away several millions of human beings: it was 
called "the black death." At the same period, the op- 
pression with which the clergy burdened the laity had in- 
creased ; and the taxes had become the more oppressive, 
because the pope wanted vast sums in order to further his 
own ambitious schemes. Ignorance, also, and laxity of 
morals so generally prevailed, and especially among the 
clergy, that the people themselves felt more or less power- 
fully and convincingly the need of some restorative and 
remedy. As the way of salvation was concealed from the 
degraded multitude, men were easily induced to have re- 
course to anything that seemed to promise quiet to the 
conscience. Many went on pilgrimages to Rome, espe- 
cially at the celebration of the jubilee year in 1350, and 
to other places accounted sacred: they purchased indul- 
gences ; they placed implicit confidence in the power as- 
sumed by the begging friars to save souls, who juggled 
them with every kind of religious fraud ; they established 
scourging fraternities, and a variety of more or less ex- 
travagantly erroneous sects : but a few united themselves 
either with those Waldenses who still privately among 
them maintained their ground, or with other reputed or 
real heretics. A general sense of the want of reforma- 
tion, both in ecclesiastics and laity, continued to be felt 
more and more, but the time for it was not yet come. 

Greater still was the ferment and confusion of Germany, 
in political respects, during the reign of Wenceslaus, the 
son of Charles IV., A. D. 1378-1400. That prince, by 
his indecision and indifference, suffered the fist-riglit, or 
law of private warfare, to regain ascendency, and quite lost 
his royal authority both in Bohemia and Germany. The 
great insecurity of life and property which at that time 
prevailed, when princes and nobles could with impunity 
come upon opulent towns and cities, and levy upon them 
contributions by throats of plundering and burning, caused 



HOUSE OF HAPSBURG. 231 

such cities and towns to form among themselves an alliance 
offensive and defensive: thus arose the Swahicm league. 
Such princes and nobles, on the other hand, formed also 
similar confederacies of their own to oppose them : thus 
we read of the Lion league, the league of St. George, the 
Schlegler kings, and the Martin's birds. The league of the 
Swiss towns also, which hitherto had consisted of the eight 
ancient places, Lucern, Zurich, Glarus, Zug, Berne, and 
the three forest towns, acquired additional strength about 
this period. Duke Leopold of Austria, a nephew of the 
duke Leopold who was defeated at the pass of Morgarten, 
longed to chastise the Swiss, because they had come to the 
assistance of his oppressed subjects on the Hapsburg es- 
tates. With a considerable band of well-armed knights 
he marched against them in the year 1386, when no more 
than fourteen hundred men, with small arms and unmailed, 
were forthcoming to oppose him near Sempach, and were 
no match for the iron mass, with their long spears stretched 
out before them in all directions. 

The Swiss fell on their knees, and supplicated God for 
deliverance ; but as for victory, they expected it not, but 
only to die in defense of the land of their fathers. Then 
stepped forward Arnold of Winkelried, a hero worthy of 
the age of the Maccabees, and crying out to his country- 
men, " I will make an opening for you !" he dashed at the 
enemy, pressed to his bosom as many as he could grasp 
of their spears pointed against him, and fell dead with 
them in his body. Listantly did his comrades pour into 
the opening which he had thus effected, and being inflamed 
to the utmost by this sacrifice of his own life, they made, 
with their heavy sword strokes, a dreadful slaughter of the 
enemy, and wrung from them a most complete victory. 
Thus their liberty was once more sealed. 

Wenceslaus had lost the respect of his subjects, not only 
by his incompetency to preserve order among them, but 
also by acts of tyranny. Every old bridge in the Roman 



232 HOUSE OF HAPSBURG. 

Catholic part of Germany retains to this day a memorial 
of his cruelty, namely, in having upon it a statue of John 
of Nepomuc, an official to the archbishop of Prague. This 
John, by the emperor's order, was thrown into the river 
Moldau, from the top of the main bridge, which crosses it 
in the city of Prague, and was afterward canonized by the 
pope. Wenceslaus at last was dethroned, A. D. 1400; 
and after Prince Rupert of the Palatinate, who was much 
occupied in Italy, had reigned till 1410, the imperial 
crown came to Wenceslaus's younger brother Sigismund, 
king of Hungary, who displayed more energy and circum- 
spection, but, at the same time, was of a fickle and unstable 
character. 

(d.) Contentions for the Papal Chair — Council of Constance. 

At this period, not only the church, but the Papacy 
also, was in a state of deep debasement. Since the time 
of Clement V., 1305, seven successive popes had resided 
at Avignon ; and, what is more, they were all native sub- 
jects of France, which displays the influence of the French 
kings in their appointment. If such a circumstance tended 
to lessen the impression of the pope's claims to infalhbility, 
that impression must have been still more weakened when, 
in 1378, Urban VL, an Italian, was elected pope at Rome, 
and, at the very same time, Clement VII., a Frenchman, 
was crowned with the triple tiara at Fondi. Moreover, 
we find these popes not only acknowledged by several 
countries of Europe, but outbidding each other by intrigue, 
simony, oppressions, and exactions. By and by, even a 
third made his appearance, by the name of Alexander V., 
after whose death, John XXIII., a vicious wretch, sup- 
plied his place, A. D. 1410. 

Amid all this profligacy of the times, the cry for a 
general council, to put an end to these long and un- 
happy divisions, and to establish the rightful pope in 
his proper seat of supremacy, became more and more 



HOUSE OF HAPSBURG. 233 

audible. After evading or frustrating a multitude of en- 
deavors to bring it about, John XXIII. was, at length, 
prevailed on to issue his rescript for a general council to 
be held at Constance, and to attend it in person, A. D. 
1414. All the three popes were now formally deposed, 
and the Germans insisted that immediate attention should 
be given to the amending of ecclesiastical discipline and 
arrangements, the remedying of abuses, and the limitation 
of the Papal claims. But the Italians, after long conten- 
tions, prevailed, in the first place, to get a new pope elect- 
ed by the name of Martin V., who, by artful concessions, 
and a variety of fair promises, contrived so to manage the 
council, that after spending four years in effecting nothing, 
it broke up ; and the pope once more came forth triumph- 
ant from the perilous struggle. And how could it be ex- 
pected that an assembly of ecclesiastical rulers, who so 
awfully fostered immorality as to suffer more than seven 
hundred harlots and concubines to be found among them, 
would counsel anything beneficial to the church ? — an as- 
sembly which, instead of humbling themselves before God 
for prevailing sins, burdened themselves still more heavily 
with the guilt of blood ; and of whom it was proverbial 
among the Swabians to say, that it would take more than 
thirty years to cleanse Constance, by any expiatory sacri- 
fice, from those foul abominations which were committed 
in it by the council itself! Indeed, even the Germanic 
sovereign, the emperor Sigismund, showed himself quite 
unaware of his high commission to curb the exorbitant 
power of the Papacy, neither did he make use of the 
favorable opportunity, as Frederic I. would have done. 
This is most evident from the fate of John Huss, whose 
cruel martyrdom is the darkest shade in the whole picture 
of this ecclesiastical council. 



234 HOUSE OF HAPSBURG. 

(e.) The Bohemian Brethren and the Hussites. 

Toward the close of the twelfth century, many of the 
Waldensian witnesses of the faith, who had been driven 
out of France, had escaped to Bohemia ; and there they 
served their God in close concealment. It is certain, 
however, that their residence in Bohemia was not without 
influence at Prague on those active and estimable preach- 
ers, who, in the fourteenth century, openly and boldly 
testified against church corruptions, and especially against 
the gross immoralities of the clergy. In England, at the 
same period, the vices and impositions of the begging 
friars, and the abominations of the Papal throne, were 
courageously exposed by Wiclif; who, by his numerous 
tracts, and by his translation of the Scriptures into the 
language of the nation, made a general and lasting im- 
pression upon the people. 

By the above-mentioned preachers at Prague, as also 
by Wiclif s writings, there was stirred up the spirit 
of the famous John Huss, a clergyman and professor 
in the university of Prague, to speak loudly against the 
ecclesiastical abuses, especially against the trade of indul- 
gences, and to direct the attention of his numerous hearers 
to the true doctrine of the written word of God. The 
council of Constance summoned him to appear before them, 
and to answer to certain articles alledged against him : and, 
as he had a great many friends among the higher classes 
in Bohemia, a safe-conduct was obtained for him from the 
emperor Sigismund, by virtue of which he was to go 
thither and return without molestation. The clergy, how- 
ever, paid no regard to this safe-conduct, but persuaded 
the emperor that no faith was to be kept with a heretic ; 
and Sigismund disgracefully yielded to their arguments, 
and broke his imperial word. Huss was put in chains at 
Constance, and di'agged from one prison to another, four 
in all ; in the dungeons of which, mostly very damp and 



HOUSE OF HAPSBURG. 235 

injurious to his health, he was cruelly confined for months 
together. After undergoing three different trials before 
the council, in which his arguments of defense were never 
once examined, he was condemned to death; and was 
burned alive at the stake, in 1415, and his ashes were 
scattered upon the Rhine. In the same manner was also 
his friend and fellow-laborer in the faith, Jerome of Prague, 
deprived of life in the following year ; and all who in any 
way had embraced the sentiments of Huss were denomi- 
nated Hussites, and were pronounced heretics. 

From the warlike spirit of that age, during which both 
violence and lawlessness were the order of the day, as also 
from the circumstance, that among the Hussites were many 
knights and persons of distinction, who regarded patient 
suffering as no honor, but rather a reproach to themselves, 
it is evident that a powerful opposition was formed against 
the proceedings of the council of Constance, an opposition 
that was not to be silenced by the diet which Sigismund 
convened at Brunn, in the year 1419. Hence things came 
at length to open war ; and Sigismund's army was defeated 
by the Hussites, (who had put themselves under the com- 
mand of John Zisca,) on the 3d of April, 1420; and as 
a great part of the latter contended more for liberty than 
for Christian truth, and the rest in general brought with 
them crude and lawless notions, they practiced much vio- 
lence and cruelty upon the adherents of the Papal party. 
They were put under the ban by the pope, who also pro- 
claimed a crusade against them ; but the crusading army 
was again totally defeated, and the Hussites spread such 
terror among their enemies that the latter seldom ventured 
courageously to attack them. An imperial force, which 
again marched to oppose them, was not more successful. 
After Zisca's death the Hussites found two more leaders, 
named Procopius, who were equally daring and success- 
ful ; and they even desolated Saxony, Lusatia, and other 
neighboring provinces. Meanwhile, however, they fell 



236 HOUSE OF HAPSBURG. 

out among themselves, and became divided into two par- 
ties, called the Calixtines and the Taborites ; but, at length, 
after all theii* principal leaders had been slain in the battle 
of Boehmisch-Brod, (Bohemian Bread,) fought upon the 
30th of May, 1434, the fourteen pacific articles which had 
been drawn up by the council of Basle, whose sittings and 
deliberations had been holding since 1431, were accepted, 
and Sigismund was acknowledged by the Hussites as king 
of Bohemia. But the contention was not long arrested ; 
for the Hussites were again, from time to time, indiscrimi- 
nately oppressed and persecuted, till, in the year 1457, the 
best of them became united into a Christian community, 
which from that time has been distinguished by the name 
of the Church of the Brethren of Bohemia and Moravia ; 
a church that, amid many persecutions, preserved the jewel 
of their faith and religious liberty entire from one century 
to another, and which still subsists in that offset of it which 
at this day is so well known as the Revived Evangelical 
Church of the United Brethren. 

Meanwhile the council of Basle had seriously applied 
themselves to remedy many abuses in ecclesiastical matters, 
and had already passed some important resolutions to that 
effect : but it had ever been the policy of the Papal power 
not to yield to any such decrees of councils, but to insist on 
every one of its own asserted claims and acquired preroga- 
tives ; and Eugenius IV., who then wore the triple crown, 
endeavored to evade the danger by transferring the sittings 
of the council to Italy. The council, at first, steadfastly 
resisted this interference of the pope, and even deposed 
him ; but their zeal soon abated, and, after the year 1441, 
it was gradually dissolved. The popes, however, from that 
time were never able to recover all their former influence, nor 
to regain the formidable position which they had maintained 
in preceding centuries. At that period, 1417, the mark 
(margraviate) of Brandenburgh devolved to Frederic of 
Zollern,the progenitor of the present royal family of Prussia. 



HOUSE OF HAPSBURG. 237 

(f.) From Albert II. to Maximilian I. 

When Albert II., whose government was of a very- 
hopeful character, had been called away by death from the 
Germanic imperial thi'one, after reigning but two years, 
this dignity came to Duke Frederic III. of Austria, A. D. 
1439-1493 ; and from that time the electoral princes 
abode by the house of Austria as long as its direct male 
line subsisted. Frederic III. had very little in common 
with his two great Hohenstaufen predecessors of that 
name, save only his well-meaning disposition. Their 
decision, perseverance, and thorough-going spirit were quite 
wanting in him. The union of the Germanic princes in 
the one common interest of the empire was now become 
very lax. A selfishness and private narrowness of ex- 
clusive policy in the several cities and princes had left less 
and less room for public spirit and general patriotism ; and 
Frederic was not the man that knew how, by open, influen- 
tial, and decisive measures, to set bounds to this collision 
of interests. He was so little respected, that the princes 
commonly took their part in the general diets by their 
deputies only : indeed he was more than once besieged in 
his castle by his own subjects ; and the princes, on one 
occasion, even thought seriously of deposing him. Had 
his lot been cast in better times, he might, perhaps, have 
been a good governor ; but in an age of such disquietude 
and ferment as was the latter half of the fifteenth centuiy, 
when an entirely new form of things became developed in 
Europe, it required a prince of much more penetration, 
deep reflection, and vigorous activity, to control all the 
mighty movements of such a period, and to bring them to 
bear upon one great object. 

Fault is found with historians in general, that, instead 
of giving a full description of the nations, and of their 
developments, they merely confine themselves to memoirs 
of the reigning princes. Such a censure has only an 



238 HOUSE OF HAPSBURG. 

apparent foundation. As the word of God itself follows 
this same method in the history of the people of Israel, it 
cannot in any other case be so faulty as is pretended. 
From the close mutual connection that subsists between 
people and prince, the history of the one is inseparable 
from that of the other ; that of the latter is as it were the 
commentary and echo of the former ; and from the pre- 
mised truth, that " the powers that be are ordained of God," 
as instruments whereby he blesses or chastises the nations, 
it is easy to comprehend how the condition of a people can 
easily be inferred from that of its prince. It might be 
expected that, under the government of so weak an emperor 
as Frederic III., things must have gone on in a strangely 
confused manner. And if such an insecure, and, therefore, 
anxious state of public affairs, which must necessarily have 
resulted from the many private wrongs of individuals, 
is to be regarded, on the one hand, as a divine rebuke for 
the gross immorality of those times ; it may be considered, 
on the other hand, as a salutary preparative of better 
times approaching, inasmuch as it exposed the unhappy 
consequences of a general estrangement from God. Thus 
it served to make men desirous of a remedy, as also glad 
to avail themselves of the means of amendment, by return- 
ing to God and to his word. These means were soon pre- 
sented by the glorious Reformation. 

Frederic III., who indeed was also poor, his patrimonial 
possessions consisting of only a part of Austria, and who, 
therefore, was the less able to act with influence, had the 
unhappiness to see his family bereaved of its hereditary 
kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary, which had accrued to 
that family by Albert of Austria, in 1437. He moreover 
incurred great peril by an invasion of King Matthias Cor- 
vinus of Hungary ; and it was only the speedy death of 
this warlike Hungarian prince that delivered him from it. 
On the other hand, he had the gratification of seeing his 
son, the bold, active, and worthy Maximilian, prospectively 



HOUSE OF HAPSBURG. 239 

elected as his successor ; and by the marriage of the latter 
with Mary of Burgundy, the rich possessions of her family 
devolved to the house of Austria, and compensated for the 
loss of Hungary and Bohemia. 

The commencement of the reign of the chivalrous em- 
peror Maximilian L, 1493-1519, forms a worthy close to 
the middle age, and a transition to a better period. He 
was a zealous promoter of the arts and sciences, and a 
vigorous ruler. In his youth he showed himself of a very 
rash and adventurous disposition, for instance, on the Ty- 
rolese Martin's Wall,* where he experienced a most re- 
markable preservation. The first acts of his government 
were liis abolition of the fist-right, (or law of private war- 
fare,) in 1495, and his instituting the tribunal of the im- 
perial chamber, to which was afterward added the court 
of the imperial council. All litigations of importance, even 
those between princes and subjects, or among the princes 
themselves, were settled in these courts without further 
appeal ; and if their dilatory and slovenly way of business 
afterward became proverbial, the fault at least does not 
belong to their first institution. Maximilian likewise intro- 
duced more order into the administration of justice in the 
empire by dividing it into ten districts, and issuing general 
laws of police for all. It Avas in his reign that the post- 
offices were first introduced into Germany. His appoint- 
ment of these was soon found of great benefit to the nation. 
Louis XL of France had set him the example of it in the 
year 1480. Maximilian was not so successful in his 
foreign undertakings. To the Swiss, whom he required to 
accede to the Swabian league, he was obliged to yield their 
independence, by the peace of Basle ; and the exertions he 
used for acting a decisive part in the wars of France with 

* An exceedingly high precipice, to the top of which he had with 
difficulty climbed, and from which he fell to the bottom of the 
abyss below, without receiving any serious injury. Such is the 
report in Germany. — Trans. 



240 ENGLAND, FRANCE, SPAIN, 

Italy had no immediate effect, except that Pope Julius 11. 
allowed him the title of elected Roman emperor ; a title 
which every successive emperor from that time took at 
once, as soon as elected by the princes, without first getting 
leave for it at Rome. 

More effectual were the steps he took to enlarge the 
possessions of the house of Hapsburg. He accomplished 
the reunion of all its Austrian hereditary dominions ; he 
obtained, by his marriage, the rich possessions of Bur- 
gundy ; also, by the marriage of his children, he gained to 
the house of Hapsburg the succession to the throne of 
Spain ; and, by the marriage of his grand-children, he made 
hereditary in the same family the crown of Hungary. 
These acquisitions were of some benefit to Germany, inas- 
much as by securing the succession in those kingdoms, 
there was thus far secured to it tranquilUty and order ; but 
they became a source of manifold contentions, wars, and 
mischief. 

XIIL— ENGLAND, FRANCE, SPAIN, AND OTHER 
COUNTRIES. 

The history of England in the fourteenth and fifteenth 
centuries is a picture with little Hght, but much dark and 
red coloring. Little occurs, either at home or abroad, ex- 
cept war, devastation, cruelties, deadly hate, and a multi- 
plicity of murders. The Scots, in 1314, by a battle with 
Edward H., gained their independence ; and England, 
during his reign, was rent with intestine divisions. More 
prosperous was Edwai'd HI., who reigned from 1327 to 
1377, at least in the first half of his reign ; when, by the 
victories of his son, the Black Prince, he got possession of 
a large portion of the kingdom of France, which, however, 
Avas afterward regained by that nation. His grandson, 
Richard XL, lost his crown and life by insurrections at 
home ; and it was not till the reign of Henry V. of England 
that its sovereign could renew his claims to the French 



AND OTHER COUNTRIES. 241 

crown ; but this Henry died in 1422, before he was in a 
condition to profit by his victories. These princes took no 
heed to learn, from the misfortunes of their predecessors, 
that to endeavor after new conquests is to bring into dan- 
ger what they have hitherto possessed ; and that it were 
more prudent to have less, and to govern and enjoy their 
own right, than to sacrifice all their powers and tranquilhty 
to insatiable covetousness. Henry VI., of England, seemed 
destined to unite the crowns of France and England, and 
had already reduced the French to extremities, when a 
great deliverance was unexpectedly brought them ; and 
the English saw themselves compelled again to evacuate 
France, save only the single town of Calais. The sword 
of the English, however, was not put up in its scabbard, 
but was turned about to be thrust into the heart of their 
own country. Dreadful civil wars raged during the reigns 
of Henry YI., Edward IV., and Richard III., occasioned 
by the contention between the houses of York and Lan- 
caster, (called the red and the white roses,) which might 
be compared to the discords between the Guelphs and 
Ghibellines of Germany, only those of England were much 
more furious and sanguinary. The fields of battle and 
the scaffolds were deluged with blood ; and the most 
wretched confusion prevailed in all the relations of civil 
life. Such miseries continued till Henry VII., having 
united in himself by his marriage the claims of both houses, 
restored peace to the country. 

During the very time such sanguinary proceedings 
distracted England, those, at least, who were of a better 
mind and longed for consolation, had the way to its true 
source opened to them by their countryman, John Wiclif, 
by directing their attention to the word of God, rendered 
accessible through his translation of the Scriptures into 
the English language. God has thus opened to his 
people in every age, even when the free declaration of 
the truths of salvation has been prevented, a way by 
11 



242 ENGLAND, FRANCE, SPAIN, 

which they might flee to him from the tumult and confu- 
sion of this evil world, and find consolation and refreshing 
from the Spirit of the Lord. 

The government of France devolved, in the year 1328, 
with Philip VI., to the house of Valois, a collateral branch 
of the Capetian race of monarchs. Philip, in his hot con- 
test with Edward III. of England, lost a portion of his 
dominions in France ; but obtained by purchase several 
other provinces, and died in 1350. Still more unfortunate 
was his son John, 1350-1364 ; who, having been unsettled 
by a formidable insurrection of the peasantry, was de- 
feated by the English. He found it necessary to cede 
some important parts of his dominions, and was even a 
prisoner in England at his death. In his reign arose the 
powerful house of the dukes of Burgundy, who afterward 
occasioned such disturbances in France. His son, Charles 
v., regained, especially through the military achievements 
of his general, Bertrand du Gueslin, the greater portion 
of his lost dominions : but, in the reign of his successor, 
the imbecile Charles VI., the crown of France for a short 
period was held by the English sovereign, A. D. 1422. 
Under such calamitous circumstances, his son, Charles VIL, 
who had been excluded from the succession, undertook 
the government. The English army had seized one 
province after another ; the duke of Burgundy had even 
joined them in the spoliation ; and Orleans, the only town 
which Charles VII. retained in the northern half of his 
kingdom, was besieged by the English troops, so that its 
seizure was daily apprehended. 

At this critical juncture a peasant's daughter, the native 
of an humble village in Lorraine, who confidently gave out 
that she was incited by a call from Heaven, put herself 
at the head of the French troops, and with soldiers in- 
spirited by confidence in this extraordinary leader, de- 
livered the city of Orleans, conducted the king in solemn 
procession to his coronation at Rheims, and was universally 



AND OTHER COUNTRIES. 243 

extolled by the French, whom she exhorted to unanimity 
and the fear of God, as a deliverer sent to them by the 
special vouchsafement of Heaven. The English, over- 
awed, retreated everywhere at her approach, abandoning 
for a time one French town after another. Her own fate, 
however, soon proved a very pitiable one. She was taken 
prisoner by the English, and was burnt alive by them as 
a witch, A. D. 1431. The conduct and success of tliis 
extraordinary woman are to be recorded among the most 
remarkable events in history, whether ancient or modern. 
All was directed and overruled by a higher and wiser 
power than that of any earthly leader, though, as a second- 
ary cause, the blind superstition of the age was a principal 
means of her success. The English, after this, were gra- 
dually expelled from France, and retained only Calais and 
a few small French islands. In the year 1457 the French 
even attempted the invasion of England. Meanwhile, the 
general dissoluteness and disregard of all civil order, which 
still prevailed in France, showed how little salutary im- 
pression this remarkable deliverance had made upon the 
nation at large, as also how much they stood in need of a 
fresh infusion of divine truth. 

Louis XL, an artful and intriguing monarch, who 
reigned from 1461 to 1483, concluded a definitive treaty 
with England in 1475, and made it his principal object to 
weaken the power of his vassals, in order to establish and 
render his own despotic monarchy quite absolute. He 
seldom resorted to open violence, for he was a perfect 
master of intrigue ; but he was at continual variance with 
Duke Charles of Burgundy, who was surnamed The Bold, 
and who was the most formidable of all his vassals. This 
prince, who possessed not only a portion of France, but 
likewise the whole of the Netherlands, and was very 
rich, and fond of state and pomp, wished only for an 
opportunity of becoming independent of France, and was 
ambitious for the title of king over his own dominions. 



244 ENGLAND, FKANCE, SPAIN, 

This, however, the emperor Frederic III. thought fit to 
refuse him, at the intriguing instance of Louis. The 
duke's haughty and enterprising spirit suggested to him- 
self the subjugation of all the provinces bordering on 
either bank of the Rhine, which involved him in a war 
with the Swiss, who hitherto had maintained their inde- 
pendence, and who, with the hereditary land of their 
fathers, retained their national simplicity, honesty, valor, 
and piety. 

On the 2d of March, 1476, the Swiss encountered the 
Burgundian army near Granson, in a general engage- 
ment. But before the battle commenced, they fell on 
their knees, and, in sight of the enemy, supplicated the 
help of God. This astonished the latter as a strange thing 
indeed ; but they were soon made to experience the power 
of such praying, for they were routed and put to flight, 
leaving immense booty behind them on the field. Charles 
was excessively chagrined at this repulse from undisciplined 
peasantry, and lost no time in meditating revenge. By 
midsummer he was again in the field with a great rein- 
forcement, and in a general battle, which took place near 
Murten, on the 22d of June, he was again totally defeated, 
with the loss of twenty thousand men, and of all his bag- 
gage, guns, and ammunition. Charles, who was almost 
frantic at this disgrace, which his pride knew not how to 
brook, contrived to rally once more ; but he lost, near the 
town of Nancy, January 5, 1477, both the battle and his 
life, leaving to the world a warning example of God's 
power to lay low the haughtiness of men. Friburg, So- 
leure, Basle, Schaffhausen, and Appenzell now joined 
that Helvetic confederacy, which from this time consisted 
of thirteen cantons, and which, in the last year of the 
fifteenth century, effected their entire independence of the 
Germanic empire. 

Charles left but one surviving child, namely, his daugh- 
ter Maria, whom Maximilian, the son of Frederic III., 



AND OTHER COUNTRIES. 245 

obtained in marriage, and with her the rich inheritance of 
Burgundy. Louis, however, who was now, by the death 
of Charles, freed from his most formidable enemy, con- 
trived to reduce Burgundy Proper into a feudatory to his 
crown, as also to incorporate with the original kingdom of 
France the extensive feudal territories of Guienne, Berry, 
Normandy, Maine, Anjou, and Provence. Charles YIII., 
the successor of this dishonest monarch, who reigned from 
1483 to 1498, was a weak prince, under whose government 
the peace of the country was disturbed by many civil com- 
motions. He obtained, however, the additional province 
of Britanny, by marrying its hereditary princess, Anna; 
and, moreover, he assumed the title of Greek emperor, 
which had been made over to him by Andrew Paloeologus, 
the last prince of Greece. He took, indeed, Florence and 
Naples ; but, as a powerful confederacy was formed against 
himj he was obliged to march back to France, and with 
difficulty escaped the hands of his enemies. 

With Charles VIH. became extinct, A. D. 1498, the 
male line of the ancient house of Valois ; and with Louis 
XII., a prince of excellent qualities, the house of Orleans 
came to the throne. He adopted the unsuccessful policy 
of Charles VIII. in Italy, and took Milan and Naples, 
which involving him in a war with Spain, he was, in 
A. D. 1505, constrained to surrender Naples, though he 
retained Milan and Genoa. But even these he lost six 
years afterward, in consequence of a league which the pope 
had concerted with Spain and Germany. Hereupon he 
determined to put an end to the Papal power altogether, 
and had already caused medals to be struck with the in- 
scription, Perdam Babylonis nomeuy "I will destroy the 
name of Babylon ;" when another pope succeeded to the 
pontifical chair, with whom he concluded a peace. He died 
in 1515. He had no want of military courage ; and among 
his brave generals was the heroic chevalier. Bayard, called 
" the fearless and blameless knight ;" but his honest cha- 



246 ENGLAND, FRANCE, SPAIN, 

racter was no match for the artful and intriguing policy of 
his active and experienced opponents. Though engaged 
in so many wars, he was not negligent in the direction of 
affairs at home; he corrected the administration of justice, 
lessened the burdens of taxation, and was hailed by his 
subjects as " the father of his country/' 

The history of Spain presents, after the Mohammedan 
invasion, a twofold contest, which was decided at the end 
of this period. On the one hand, there was the struggle 
for the extermination of the Saracens from that country, 
which was concluded by King Ferdinand of Aragon taking 
Grenada, the last seat of Moorish dominion in Spain. On 
the other hand, there was an obstinate conflict among the 
petty sovereignties into which that country was divided : 
the object, which was at length attained, was gradually to 
unite the whole into one great consolidated power; an 
object which the perpetual war with the Moors had made 
desirable. King Ferdinand, by his marriage with Isabella, 
queen of Castile, brought under one rule the government 
of all Spain, in the year 1469. Likewise the small king- 
dom of Portugal now began to raise itself to historical im- 
portance, by its acquisitions in distant parts of the world. 

While, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the king 
of Aragon held the sovereignty of Sicily, and the house of 
Anjou that of Naples, the latter under the powerful in- 
fluence of the pope, great changes took place in Upper 
Italy. The cities of Lombardy, becoming wealthy and 
flourishing by their manufactures and commerce, had, in a 
long and obstinate struggle against their own sovereigns, 
the German emperors, attained to a considerable degree 
of independence ; and multiplied their riches, especially at 
the period of the crusades, while they maintained their 
freedom by their warlike spirit. But nations continue to 
thi-ive only as long as they can support themselves by un- 
affected simplicity and unity. Excessive wealth begets lux- 
ury, brings on the corruption of morals, and either enervates 



AND OTHER COUNTRIES. 247 

the spirit of liberty, or inflames it to licentiousness. This 
has continually been realized, both in republics and in 
despotic governments. Added to this, "the natural man" 
strives not so much to get liberty for others, as license for 
himself; nor is it so really liberty that he seeks, though he 
calls it by that name, as to have power in his own hands : 
his desire is not merely to have no lord over him, but to 
be lord himself. All history, in every age, has evinced 
this to be the fact. Whenever an individual in a free 
state, who is more actuated by pride than motives of lux- 
urious indulgence, obtains through wealth, or favorable 
circumstances, or his public services, the means of giving 
furtherance to his wishes, he, for the most part, endeavors 
to bring his fellow-citizens under the yoke, and nothing 
will serve him but the change of a free constitution into 
one that is despotic. Such was the experience of the 
Greeks and Romans of antiquity ; and such was now that 
of the free cities of Upper Italy. Private families rose 
into power, acquired special privileges and prerogatives, 
exercised important influence over the government, and 
thus became the sole masters. This was the case at 
Milan, which, in the year 1395, was raised to a dukedom, 
and added several other cities to its jurisdiction. The 
same was the case at Mantua, Florence, Genoa, and 
Venice. The dukedom of Savoy was also formed in a 
similar manner, in 1416. The most powerful of all these 
states at that time was the commercial one of Venice, 
which united under its dominion several cities of Upper 
Italy, some islands of the Mediterranean, and also the 
greater part of Dalmatia, and which, at the close of this 
period, had in its hands the commerce of the East, and 
especially of India. 

In the East, there had been formed, out of that large 
portion of it which had been subdued by Gengis Khan, 
several Mogul sovereignties. Out of one of these came 
TimurBeg, (Tamerlane,) in the year 1369, who conquered 



24:8 ENGLAND, AND OTHER COUNTRIES. 

Persia, India, and all Western Asia as far as Moscow; 
lie also subdued the Ottoman Turks, who a short time 
before had pushed their march into Europe, conquered a 
portion of the Greek empire, and made Adrianople their 
head-quarters. Just as he was meditating the conquest 
of China he was removed by death, and his empire soon 
fell to pieces. But a remnant of the empire of the great 
mogul survived in Lidia for a long period. After his death 
the Turks recovered their strength, and soon proved them- 
selves the most formidable neighbors of the Greek empire, 
the whole interior of which had already exceedingly de- 
cayed, through gross effeminacy, and vice of every descrip- 
tion. In the year 1453 they sacked Constantinople, and 
put an end to its imperial power, as a righteous infliction 
from God upon that depraved city, in which sin, perfidy, 
folly, and the corruption of Christian truth by idolatry, had 
arisen to the highest pitch. At that time John Hunnya- 
des was at the helm of the Hungarian government. He 
was a powerful and brave warrior, who, in conjunction 
with George Kastriota, (Scanderbeg,) the equally brave 
prince of Epirus, had long encountered the Turks, without 
being able to avert the downfall of the Greek empire. 
After his death, his son Matthias Corvinus was chosen 
king of Hungary. He, like his father, was an undaunted 
warrior, who put all his neighbors in terror, enlarged his 
dominions, and yet, like a parent of his country, provided 
for the instruction and welfare of his subjects. His suc- 
cessors, Ladislaus and Louis II., were the last independent 
sovereigns; for afterward this country, and also Bohemia, 
devolved to the house of Austria. Poland was at one time 
a dependence of Germany ; at another, it was united with 
Hungary; but subsequently, A. D. 1386, its crown de- 
volved to the house of Jagellon, dukes of Lithuania, which 
region had been conquered, and compelled to embrace 
Christianity, by the Teutonic Knights. That reigning 



IMPORTANT CHANGES AT THIS PERIOD. 249 

house united Lithuania and West Prussia to Poland. 
Russia, toward the end of this century, was freed from the 
yoke of the moguls, A. D. 1477, by Jwan Wasilje witch, 
who also extended its territory. 

XIV.— IMPORTANT CHANGES AT THIS PERIOD. 

(a.) The Invention of Gunpowder. 

The two centuries immediately preceding the Reforma- 
tion may be considered as a period of great and manifold 
preparations and developments ; the germs of which partly 
had lain concealed in the bosom of ages, and partly had 
now, for the first time, been, as it were, accidentally cast 
into it. Thus their present coincidence assisted in the 
formation of a new epoch. 

Important inventions and discoveries now produced also 
great effects. Government by mere physical power was 
characteristic of the middle ages ; might had everywhere 
precedency of right ; and the great wall of separation be- 
tween the nobles and the people, as likewise the whole 
mode of warfare at that period, was mainly grounded on 
this principle. But later times have brought things nearer 
to an equahzation ; and even before modern politics and 
the more general diffusion of knowledge had begun to con- 
tribute to this effect, the invention of gunpowder, and the 
consequent change in European warfare, had occasioned 
the first advance toward it. Through this invention, 
which is dated as early as the middle of the fourteenth 
century, though it was not till some time afterward that it 
began to be generally applied to the art of war, the value 
of mere personal prowess was nearly annihilated ; for the 
bravest hero had no ability to withstand a ball that might 
be leveled at him from a distance : fortified cities and 
castles could no longer be secured by their strong waUs ; 
and the desire of gentlemen and of the wealthier sort to 
expose their lives in the field of battle disappeared. They 
11* 



250 IMPORTANT CHANGES AT THIS PERIOD. 

themselves preferred to stay at home, and to pay men of 
the common people, who set less value on their lives, with 
money which could be more easily spared, that such might 
form the main body on the field in their stead. Now, in 
proportion as personal strength and prowess sunk in value, 
so it was accounted worth while to seek distinction by 
prudent considerateness and calculation, by activity and 
general superiority of intellect. Thus arose the new art 
of war, and the practice of keeping a standmg army of 
paid military, who were called soldiers, from sold, or the 
'pay which they now received. In these respects, as well 
as in all the other departments of common life in modern 
times, intellectual culture and the rule of mind gradually 
gained ascendency over all greatness of a merely corporeal 
nature. 

(b.) Discovery of America. 

Some time before this, an invention had arisen in Eu- 
rope, which led the way to other important discoveries. 
This was that of the magnetic needle, which, by its regu- 
larly pointing to the north, was now found to be a secure 
guide to mariners. They had hitherto directed their 
course by the stars ; but as these in foul weather cannot 
be seen, vessels at sea could only be steered in sight of 
.shore, which often rendered their passage very dangerous, 
and, of course, forbade all voyages of discovery. At the 
beginning of the fifteenth century, however, the Portu- 
guese discovered the Azores and Canary Islands, and 
afterward the Cape de Verde Islands, and the coast of 
Guinea in West Africa. At length, the navigator, Bar- 
tholomew Diaz, succeeded in reaching the Cape of Good 
Hope, in 1486 ; and, twelve years afterward, Vasco de 
Gama sailed round Africa, and discovered the passage to 
India. Hitherto the Italian cities of Venice, Genoa, Pisa, 
&c., had monopolized the trade for Indian produce, which 
was brought overland by Arabia ; and the gi'eat increase 



IMPORTANT CHANGES AT THIS PERIOD. 251 

of their wealth, by these means, had excited the envy and 
jealousy of other European nations. But the Portuguese, 
having found a new and more easy way to India, drew 
over, by degrees, the India trade to themselves ; and hereby 
this abundant source of wealth became entirely lost to the 
Italian commercial cities. The object of Christopher Co- 
lumbus, the son of a common citizen of Genoa, who about 
this time discovered America, had been to find a passage to 
India ; for, rightly assuming that the earth is spherical, he 
hoped to reach India from the east, by steering continually 
westward. But as he did not possess means to fit out ves- 
sels for such a distant voyage, he applied to the govern- 
ments of several European countries ; and, after seven 
years' perseverance, found Ferdinand and Isabella of 
Spain disposed to listen to him. It was neither ambition 
nor avarice that inspired him to such perseverance, but a 
noble spirit, which, though it was tinctured with the no- 
tions of an ignorant and superstitious age, nevertheless 
commands our respect. He, like many thousands of de- 
vout men before him, had laid it much to heart that the 
holy city was again in the hands of the infidels, (the 
Turks ;) and he hoped, by the discovery of a new passage 
to wealthy India, to obtain means for rescuing Jerusalem 
from the unholy violence of the Mussulmans. He had 
carried this thought about with him for a long time ; but 
his subsequent ill success had always thrown some hinder- 
ance in his way. At length, with three old vessels, and a 
hundred and twenty men, on the 3d of August, 1492, he 
put to sea, from a Spanish harbor ; and, out on a great 
ocean, he was uncertain whether he should have to make 
a voyage of four weeks or four months before he should 
arrive in sight of land. From old times there had existed 
the obscure legendary report of a great kingdom of Atlan- 
tis, which was said to have been situated where the middle 
billows of the Atlantic now roll, and to have been long ago 
buried beneath its mighty waters. Whether there is any 



252 niroRTANT changes at this period. 

ground for such a report ; whether such a country was the 
bridge by which the American aborigines passed over into 
the new world; or whether their course was eastward, 
across the tract which is now called Behring's Straits, and 
which might then have been dry land, cannot now be de- 
termined. 

Of the aborigines of America we have no early records 
that can be depended on. As they have been quite igno- 
rant of writing, during at least three thousand years, the 
accounts which they give of their origin consist of nothing 
better than obscure and uncertain traditions, among which, 
however, that of a general deluge is not the least remark- 
able. But they appear to have enjoyed periods of culti- 
vation as well as of wildness ; and, like the other nations 
of antiquity, to have made various attempts to express, by 
architectural memorials of human greatness, the natural 
desire of fallen man for worldly glory and prosperity. The 
history of the Peruvians is an instance of oral traditions ; 
and the present ruins of Palenque, in Mexico, is one among 
many other memorials of the architectural kind. But even 
the history of these nations is a striking proof, that a people 
suffered of God to walk in their own ways, naturally turn 
aside to error, and become corrupt ; and that the human 
heart, without the light of revelation, loses itself in the 
most perverted ideas. In no one of all these nations, 
parted off as they have been by their great distance from 
the rest of the world, has been preserved the knowledge 
of the true God, which they could not but have originally 
received from their earliest patriarchal settlements in the 
old world. And though there was found in Peru a less 
deformed species of idolatry, similar to that of the Persian 
worship of the sun, yet among their more northern neigh- 
bors, the Mexicans, the most hideous kind of image worship 
was universally prevalent. Even in America, as in the 
old eastern world, the natives have all along been partly 
nations of some culture, and partly nomades ; only they 



IMPORTANT CHANGES AT THIS PERIOD. 253 

have been every way far behind them in skill and con- 
dition, as having been no sharers in the progressive leaven 
of knowledge and general information. 

The Mexicans and Peruvians have, in their own way, 
been people of culture to some considerable degree of per- 
fection ; arts, manufactures, and luxuries, having been 
known among them. The Mexicans will, in these respects, 
bear a comparison with the Hindoos, or the ancient Baby- 
lonians ; the Peruvians with the Lydians ; the Indians of 
North America with the ancient Germans. But as the 
more cultivated nations of the old world were the earliest 
to become ripened for destruction by luxury and vice, and 
hurried on their own decay and dissolution ; so also were 
those of America. Imposing as was the exterior condition 
of Mexico and Peru, at the time of their being discovered 
by the Spaniards, it was soon found that they were so de- 
graded to the worst habits of vice, and in such a state of 
selfishness and disunion, that they would speedily have 
come to dissolution of themselves, even had vicious Eu- 
ropeans never appeared among them. This serves to 
account for those dreadful visitations which God permitted 
to befall these countries through the rapacity of their 
Spanish conquerors. They had become ripe for destruction 
and extermination, like the Canaanites of old, with only 
this difference, that the sword of the Israelites in Canaan 
was unsheathed by the express command of God, so that 
they were conscious instruments of his righteous judgments ; 
whereas the Spaniards unconsciously executed the will of the 
supreme Lord, and were as scourges in his hand, that were 
thrown away as soon as done with : for as they inflicted 
punishment on the corrupt Americans, merely from the 
incitement of avarice and their own bad spirit, so they 
themselves, in turn, were subjected to the blasting rebuke 
of God's righteous displeasure. 

Columbus, after long and severe trials of patience, 
having fallen in with an island of the West Indies, thought 



254 IMPORTANT CHANGES AT THIS PERIOD. 

at first that he had now arrived at India itself, in a quarter 
hitherto unknown to Europeans. He went on discovering 
one island after another, till finally he reached the western 
continent, which, however, he supposed to be only a new 
island. The tidings of his success occasioned great re- 
joicings in Spain, and hence arose an irresistible passion 
for fitting out vessels and making discoveries. The im- 
mediate object of desire was gold and variety of wealth ; 
while more piously disposed persons thought also on the 
acquisitions which the Christian church might gain by the 
conversion of the heathen natives. But to prevent the 
danger of a war with the Portuguese, who for some time 
had far preceded them in the field of discovery, recourse 
was had to the pope for his sanction and decision. So 
rude in that period were ecclesiastical notions, that men 
had been accustomed to look up to the pope as the supreme 
judge in all matters of appeal, and to regard him as God's 
vicegerent upon earth, although at this time his influence 
was no longer at its highest point. But selfishness had so 
thoroughly pervaded all their ideas, and had so blunted 
every feeUng of reason and equity, that men and govern- 
ments allowed themselves to be invested by the pope with 
gi-ants of lands and countries, which had already their right- 
ful owners and possessors. The pope drew upon the map 
a line, on one side of which all newly discovered country 
was to belong to the Portuguese, and on the other side of 
which all was allotted to the Spaniards ; and with this ar- 
bitration of the supreme head of Christendom were their 
consciences perfectly composed and satisfied. Thus the 
Portuguese possessed Brazil, and the Spaniards conquered 
and took possession of the West India Islands one after 
another, together with Mexico and Peru. The defense- 
less natives of these countries were treated as if they had 
been no part of the human race ; their valuables and their 
lands were taken from them unasked ; their lives were re- 
garded as no more than those of animals ; and they were 



IMPORTANT CHANGES AT THIS PERIOD. 256 

compelled, by the most disgraceful methods, to profess the 
Christian religion. To drain the country of its gold, the 
natives were treated as slaves ; they were put to the hard- 
est labor in the mines, to which they had not been accus- 
tomed ; and in consequence of which they died by thou- 
sands. Hereupon the devout Dominican, Bartholomew de 
las Casas, who had dedicated his life to the welfare of the 
poor Indians, hit upon the thought of employing strong- 
bodied Africans in this work, and published a proposition 
to that effect. Thus, without dreaming of such a conse- 
quence as the monstrous and horrible slave-trade, he laid 
the foundation for that very trade itself, which has since 
annually brought many thousand negroes into cruel bond- 
age, and to extirpate which entirely all endeavors hitherto 
have been unavailing. In the same year in which Cortes 
discovered Mexico, did Magellan discover a passage round 
the southern cape of America into the great Pacific Ocean, 
and thus he circumnavigated the globe. The Spanish 
voyages of discovery westward, and those of the Portu- 
guese, who sailed eastward, met each other ; and soon was 
the face of the whole habitable globe laid open to the eye 
of the naturalist, and to the enterprise of the merchant. 
Geography, natural history, astronomy, mathematics, and 
other sciences, gained thereby a much more enlarged field 
of vision, and more appropriate destinations ; as it was now 
found necessary to labor at such sciences more closely for 
the sake of self-interest. Commerce, that had hitherto 
been limited almost entirely to the Mediterranean, became 
now extended to every part of the known world, and 
brought the most distant nations, as it were, into contact 
with each other ; though the most important use which, by 
the design of divine Providence, was to be made of this 
easier common intercourse, the spread of the gospel among 
aU nations, was not contemplated by the Christian church 
in general till a considerable period afterward. The peo- 
ple of the old world transported their productions to Ame- 



256 IMPORTANT CHANGES AT THIS PERIOD. 

rica; and the people of the new sent theirs to Europe. 
The quantity of gold and silver brought from America to 
Europe, from the year 1492 to the year 1803, — and which 
amounted to about twelve thousand millions of florins ; or 
one thousand and thirty-nine millions, three hundred and 
thirty thousand pounds, six shillings, and eight pence ster- 
ling, — has contributed to make money to become the idol 
of Europe, and to raise luxury to an inordinate height. 

(c.) Invention of Printing. 

A discovery producing a still more important change in 
the manners of Europe, and in the Christian church, had 
been already for some time on foot, namely, the art of 
printing ; a thing so simple in itself, that it would be un- 
accountable how men, with so many other and far more 
difficult inventions, did not hit upon this at a much earlier 
period : only we know, that all human inventions them- 
selves, and the season of their maturity, are dependent on 
the government of God. In the middle ages there were 
no books but in manuscript, and the few that existed could 
not be purchased, except at a very high price. The peo- 
ple in general of those times, having directed their atten- 
tion to the external world only, were the less conscious 
of any need of helps to the formation of the mind by new 
kinds of knowledge, and persevering reflection. The 
scarcity of books, and especially of copies of the Scriptures, 
was one main inlet to Popery and ecclesiastical tyranny ; 
because the people, in their ignorance, had no true stand- 
ard whereby to estimate such arrogant claims, because they 
had not the word of God. But, with the invention of 
printing, the overthrow of ecclesiastical dominion over 
conscience was certain. The art of engraving on wood 
had been invented in the fourteenth century ; and, at about 
the same period, paper was manufactured from linen rags ; 
whereas, before that time, all writing was upon costly vel- 
lum, or upon cotton paper, which was equally expensive 



IMPORTANT CHANGES AT THIS PERIOD. 257 

and less durable. Engraving upon wood was, at first, ap- 
plied merely to printing playing-cards and portraits of 
legendary saints, etc. ; but soon the ai't of printing off single 
sentences and texts, cut in wooden blocks, was also at- 
tempted; and, by and by, whole pages. Thus far had 
Lawrence Koster, of Harlem, advanced the art, between 
the years 1420-1425. John Guttenberg, of Mayence, 
went further ; he attempted the compositor's art, by put- 
ting together wooden letters, cut separately. After the 
year 1445, he entered into partnership with John Fust and 
Peter Schoeffer, of Germersheim, the latter of whom was 
the first to cut matrices for casting types of molten tin or 
lead. From this time the process went on rapidly. In 
the year 1457 was obtained the earliest printed Psalter, 
which was in Latin. Of this a few copies still exist ; and 
after the year 1462 the art of printing ceased to be a se- 
cret, as the workmen had fled from Mayence, in conse- 
quence of the war, and removed their business to various 
places, especially into Italy. 

The effects of this invention are incalculable. The 
whole external life of man has, by means of it, acquired 
another form ; and to the inward revival and renewal of 
the Christian church it was of vast importance. In the 
promotion of science, arts, and manufactures, in political 
as well as commercial advancements, in morals also, and 
in religion, it has been attended with the same powerful 
influence, though not always with the same beneficial 
effects. It has been instrumental to the extension both of 
faith and of infidelity, piety and immorality, loyalty and 
rebellion, sound knowledge and superficial acquirements ; 
all the energies of good and evil, all the bad passions, and 
all the plans and institutions for the welfare and salvation 
of the world, have taken it into their respective services. 
A reformation of the church could never, humanly speak- 
ing, have been effected without the art of printing, and the 
design of the press, on the part of divine Providence, ap- 



258 IMPORTANT CHANGES AT THIS PERIOD. 

pears to be indicated by the press itself, in its veiy earliest 
productions. The Bible, and distinct portions of it, were 
the first writings published from the printing press at 
Mayence ; and it was not till transported into Italy that it 
was made to serve the interests of heathen authors. For, 
at that time, the study of the Greek and Roman classics 
was carried to a great extent in Italy, Hungary, and Ger- 
many, at Oxford and in Paris, and had wonderful encou- 
ragement and support by the diffusion of such works from 
the press. Their study was principally promoted, partly 
by learned Italians and literary Greeks who had settled in 
Italy, and partly by the patronage bestowed upon it by 
several ruling families in that country, among v/hich was 
the famous Medici family at Florence. And, indeed, even 
this revival of Greek and Roman literature served to the 
furtherance of the kingdom of God ; for men's notions be- 
came refined by classical study, and thus a purer taste was 
formed : the deformity of monasticism and superstition, 
those supports of Popery, was exposed, and a way was 
opened for the servants of God to render his Scriptures 
accessible to the people generally. But classical studies 
brought with them into Christian philosophy and religion 
many elements of ancient heathenism, corrupted the imagi- 
nation with much of mere pagan device, and led, at the 
periods of their highest cultivation, to open contempt and 
enmity against the gospel. As the dominion of massive 
magnitude and corporeal strength forms the characteristic 
of the middle ages, so do modern ages more and more de- 
velop, in all the departments of knowledge and of com- 
mon life, and particularly in the church itself, the undue 
predominance of merely human intellect. This began to 
be perceptible as early as the Reformation, during the 
combat with ignorance and superstition ; and, soon after, 
in the argumentative conceptions and rigid tenets of dry 
orthodoxy ; while later, and in our own days, we behold 
its subtilties applied to the purpose of undermining the 



IMPORTANT CHANGES AT THIS PERIOD. 259 

fundamental truths of the everlasting gospel. In all this 
the revived classical spirit has borne no insignificant part ; 
and the universities on the continent, whose number con- 
tinued to multiply, as that of XJpsal in 1476, Tubingen in 
1477, Copenhagen in 1478, soon became its nurses, as did 
also those of Oxford and Cambridge, in England, which 
had been founded two centuries before. In these it gra- 
dually superseded the declining literature of the school- 
men; and assumed, in some instances, the same adverse 
position as this had held, with respect to those pious mem- 
bers of the church of Christ who conceived of and em- 
braced the great truths of Christianity, not so much with 
the intellect as with the spirit of their mind; and con- 
formed their philosophy, not to heathen notions, but to the 
principles of Holy Scripture. 

(d.) Important Changes in Political Government. 

That which the Reformation brought to light in an eccle- 
siastical respect, namely, that the iron and clay could not 
be incorporated with each other, became gradually mani- 
fested likewise in a political respect; and nearly all the 
nations or princes of Christendom had experienced, one 
after another, conflicts with the Papal power. But then, 
also, it became more and more evident, that the period of 
division into the te^ toes of the great image was now 
arrived. In the middle ages, the pope and the emperor 
contended for supremacy over all Cliristendom, and both 
of them regarded it as a whole that was to be kept together. 
But this keeping together became continually more relax- 
ed, till, at length, the individual states separated themselves 
by distinct constitution, language, education, and interests ; 
and cabinet policy arose, whereby each state aimed at 
making itself exclusive, and guarded against the rest, and 
concerted means for its own independent strength. This 
may serve to account for the longer duration of the 
European political system, than of that of any one of the 



260 IMPORTANT CHANGES AT THIS PERIOD. 

former great empires. As no grand idea of one common 
pervading interest any longer held these nations together, 
even the external bond could not but become less and less 
strict, while the connection itself, such as it was, might 
probably assist to their mutual independence. Each of 
these nations, now without control, developed its own 
peculiar character ; their mutual emulation served greatly 
to the promotion of the arts and sciences, and to form a 
variety of characteristic national usages ; their now isolated 
condition, relative to each other, forbade any one of them 
to overstep the natural bounds of the rest, and tended to 
the conservation of a balance of power ; and the pernicious 
notions and outbreakings of depraved nature could not 
spread in every direction so rapidly as they could in the 
great empires themselves, where the will of one man was 
the main movement of the whole. Pariicularly was this 
state of political division conducive to the blessed Reform- 
ation ; for true Christians, when persecuted in one country, 
could flee into another, and find protection. Had all Chris- 
tendom remained under one temporal supremacy, or had 
the Papal power been able to exercise equal influence in 
every Christian country, it might have been possible to 
crush the whole work of the Reformation at a single blow. 



HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION. 261 



SEVENTH PERIOD. 

FROM THE REFORMATION TO OUR OWN TIMES. 
A. D. 1517 to 1839. 

I.— HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION. 

(a.) Its Cotnmencement in Germany. 

All these preparations had brought together sufficient 
combustibles, and there needed only a spark to kindle 
the whole into a bright flame, to illumine the darkness of 
Europe. Such a spark is only effectual when struck at 
the right season ; and that right season was now arrived. 
Emperors and kings, Waldenses and Hussites, had pre- 
viously attempted a reformation ; but God's hour had not 
yet fully come. That the Reformation might be signally 
manifested as the work of God, it was to be accomplished 
by a man who had no such object in view, but who was 
carried to it, against his will, by the force of circumstances ; 
that is, by an overruling Providence. An undertaking 
that was intended for the highest exaltation and glory of 
the Romish Church, the building of the magnificent cathe- 
dral of St. Peter's at Rome, was to become the first occasion 
of breaking the power of the Papacy, and of giving a ruinous 
shock to the strong pillars that supported it. Leo X., of the 
house of Medici, in whose court the greatest luxury and 
looseness of morals prevailed, and who therefore wanted 
large supplies of money, issued, in the year 1517, an in- 
dulgence, which for Germany he committed to the farming 
management of the electoral prince, archbishop of Mayence. 
This archbishop appointed for the purpose a number of 
ecclesiastical agents, who itinerated the country, and sold, 
at stipulated prices, forgiveness of sins for the living and 
the dead. One of these agents, a Dominican friar, named 



262 HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION. 

John Tetzel, pushed on this traffic with the greatest effront- 
ery in the neighborhood of Wittenberg in Saxony, and 
even preached up the indulgence as remitting all future 
sins to those who should purchase it. 

Martin Luther resided in Wittenberg at that time, as 
professor and doctor of theology. He was a monk of the 
Augustin order, and was born at Eisleben, in Saxony, A. D. 
1483. He had become acquainted with the fundamental 
doctrines of the Christian church by means of a Latin 
Bible, which he had accidentally discovered ; and, in a visit 
to Rome, he had witnessed with his own eyes the gross cor- 
ruption of the clergy in that city ; but he still maintained 
great reverence for the pope, as head of the Christian church, 
and had not the remotest idea of renouncing obedience to 
him. Hearing of the mischief which Tetzel was doing by 
the sale of indulgences, he was fired with holy indignation ; 
and he posted on the church door in the castle of Wit- 
tenberg ninety-five Latin articles, in which he instructed 
Christian men respecting the character and abuses of indul- 
gences. These in a short time became known to all Ger- 
many. As Luther could not be induced by threats or 
promises to recant them, the pope, in the year 1520, pub- 
lished a bull against him. But Luther, meanwhile, had 
become better acquainted with the Papacy, and now re- 
garded it in a very different light, namely, as a power opposed 
to the kingdom of God. He was, moreover, protected by 
the electoral prince of Saxony, Frederic the Wise, who, 
after the death of Maximilian, had been chosen regent of 
the empire; and thus he ventured to take a bold step, 
which was, in fact, a total renunciation of the pope's author- 
ity : he publicly burned the Papal bull. No sooner had 
this daring act become known throughout Germany than 
it excited universal astonishment. It occasioned, however, 
no little joy to many hearts ; and all who mourned in secret 
over the miseries of the church took fresh courage on hear- 
ing of it. For professed Christians, and especially the 



HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION. 263 

clergy, were at that time become so corrupt, that it was no 
uncommon thing to relate jests of buffoonery even in the 
churches, and to hear a burst of laughter upon the occasion ; 
indeed, the very clergy and monks set the example in lux- 
ury, laziness, ignorance, and immoral practices. Extortion 
of money, and the gratification of their lusts, were the main 
concern of the generality ; and the groaning oppression of 
all ranks had sufficiently prepared men's minds for wel- 
coming the tidings of an attempt at their deliverance. 
Many a soul was famishing for the truth, and was disap- 
pointed at not finding it in the church ; no, not even when 
sermons were preached in the vernacular tongue, as they 
had begun to be at some places in Germany. Besides 
this, there still lived in concealment many scattered Wal- 
deuses, Wiclifites, and Bohemian Brethren, who cordially 
agreed with what Luther taught and did, and who eagerly 
devoured everything he wrote. 

(b.) The Emperor Charles V. 

Meanwhile Charles I., of Spain, the grandson of Maxi- 
milian I., after he had accepted the electoral constitutions 
that were laid before him, was chosen German emperor, 
in the year 1519, by the title of Charles V. He held his 
first imperial diet at Worms, in the year 1521, and hither 
was Luther summoned, personally to appear and plead in 
his own defense. But as he refused- to recant a single 
article of his tenets, unless convinced of its falsehood by 
the testimony of Scripture alone, he and his followers were 
put, by the young sovereign, under the ban of the empire. 
God, however, had provided, in another quarter, that its 
consequences should be rendered perfectly harmless ; for 
the emperor was involved in a war with France, with 
which he was so fully occupied, that for a considerable 
time he could but little concern himself with the affairs of 
Germany. This absence of Charles was very important 
to the Reformation, as it furnished an opportunity for its 



264 HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION. 

diffusion and taking root without disturbance ; and when 
emperors afterward labored to check its progress, it had 
gained such strong and extended ramifications, that it was 
beyond all danger of being eradicated. 

After the diet at Worms, Luther, at the desire of Prince 
Frederic, resided for a time in the castle of Wartburg, 
near Eisenach, and employed this season of his concealed 
retirement in translating the Scriptures into the German 
language. For though several vernacular translations were 
already extant, none of them merited recommendation for 
correctness or perspicuity, nor at all deserved to be com- 
pared with that of Luther. As the securest support of the 
Papacy consisted in withholding God's word from the 
common people, so the most blessed and beneficial means 
of the Reformation was having the Bible put into their 
hands. As in the heathen world at present every Bible is 
a silent missionary, so at that time every Bible was a 
silent reformer. To serious and attentive readers there 
was no need to point out the contradiction of the Romish 
Church to Scripture doctrine ; for it was too obvious not 
to be seen by them at once. Whoever read the Bible 
with any serious reflection, became immediately convinced 
that the church was sunk in corruption, and that the pope 
.was an adversary of Christ. 

The same cause that induced Luther first to oppose, and 
at length to renounce all submission to the Papacy, had, 
independently of any connection with Luther, converted 
into a reformer Ulric Zwingle, a clergyman of Zurich, in 
the year 1519. This cause was the infamous traflSc of 
indulgences, already noticed. But this traffic served to 
open his eyes to other abuses, which he no sooner perceived 
than he began publicly to preach against them ; meanwhile 
the chief magistrate of Zurich was disposed to protect him, 
and to promote his cause. Hence, in a short time, the 
Romish worship was prohibited throughout the whole 
canton, and several of the other cantons declared likewise 



HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION. 265 

for the Reformation. Among the worthies who wrought 
with great effect in bringing about this change were 
Ecolampadius and Capito at Basle, Haller at Bern, Sebas- 
tian Hofmeister at Schaff hausen and at St. Gall. Other 
cantons united in obstinately defending the Romish 
Church. 

The government of France devolved to Francis I., 
A. D. 1515 ; and his first public undertaking was an ex- 
pedition to Upper Italy, for the recovery of Milan. And 
in this he succeeded, after defeating the Swiss allies of the 
duke of Milan in the battle of Marignano. But as he 
himself had also been a competitor for the empire, and was 
displeased that Charles had been preferred before him, he 
became involved in a new war with that prince ; which, 
between the years 1521-1525, was carried into Italy, and 
ended in his total defeat at the battle of Pavia. The 
same year there broke out in Germany the war with the 
peasants, which soon spread itself over all Swabia, Alsace, 
Lorraine, Franconia, Thuringia, and Lower Saxony. The 
country people had been grievously oppressed, and obliged 
to submit to many acts of injustice. The princes, the 
landholders, and the clergy, had imposed taxes upon them 
which they were unable to pay ; and being utterly without 
education and religious knowledge, they met this oppres- 
sion by taking the law into their own hands. The reproach 
which this rebellious movement drew upon the Reformation 
was therefore most unjust ; for such a war was only another 
evidence of the inexcusable neglect of the people on the 
part of the clergy, and consequently of the necessity of a 
reformation. These disturbances were not terminated till 
after many cruelties had been committed on both sides. 
A second war between Francis I. and Charles V., in which 
the pope, siding with France, was besieged at Rome, and 
was obliged to suffer terms of peace to be dictated to him 
by Charles V., turned out likewise favorably for the latter. 
But Francis was still determined not to rest ; nnd almost 
12 



2Q(j HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION. 

to the day of his death, which took place in 1547, he kept 
Charles in perpetual war. Into this war he drew the 
Turks; in consequence of which Charles conducted an 
expedition against Tunis in the year 1535, and against 
Algiers in 1541. By these wearisome and complicated 
disputes, which always required his own personal attend- 
ance, and because of the great danger incurred to Germany 
from the Turks, Charles was prevented from attending as 
he wished to the home administration of his country. And 
his brother Ferdinand, king of the Romans, who acted as 
his viceroy, was afraid to risk an open rupture with the 
German princes, whose assistance he so much needed 
against the Turkish aggressions. 

(c.) Progress and Difficulties of the Reformation in Germany. 

At the diet of Nuremberg, m 1523, a proposal was 
made to convene a general synod, that should decide the 
pending controversies in religion. But as the princes who 
had favored the Reformation knew what to expect from 
such a synod, they, in the mean time, went on rectifying 
abuses in their own territories, and establishing a better 
form of worship, and better seminaries of religious instruc- 
tion. This was done in Saxony, Hesse, Anhalt, and else- 
where. Luther, with Philip Melancthon, and other bold 
coadjutors, was indefatigable; and his excellent popular 
writings, which were quite adapted to the understandings 
of the common people, were blessed throughout Germany, 
and other countries, to the instruction and conversion of 
many. After the death of the elector, Frederic the Wise, 
the Saxon government descended by hereditary right to 
John the Constant, who was a constant and faithful friend 
to the Reformation, and took Luther and his work under 
his special protection. The princes of Saxony, Hesse, 
Brunswick, Anlialt, etc., formed, in 1526,. the league of 
Torgau, and protested, at the diet of Spu'es, in 1529, 
against the Popish resolution, that no innovations should 



HIsJTORY OF THE REFORMATION. 267 

be made in ecclesiastical matters ; whence the adherents 
of the Reformation have ever since received the name of 
Protestants. 

At length, in the diet of Augsburg, in 1530, which was 
attended by Charles himself, these princes presented that 
confession of their faith which is well known by the name 
of the Augsburg Confession. Still no adjustment between 
the two parties was effected, because the emperor felt too 
little interest in it, and had too little impartiality to examine 
such controversies for himself; and his counselors were 
continually stirring him up to oppose them. The two 
parties dissolved the diet in no good humor with each 
other; and the Protestant princes, apprehending hostile 
measures, formed, in 1531, the league of Smalcald, by which 
they engaged to protect one another, should any violence 
be offered them on account of their religion. But things 
came not at present to extremes ; the work of God was 
still to advance, and obtain firmer footing, and the Turks 
themselves were to be made accessory to this; for all 
things serve him. The Turkish power stood with menac- 
ing aspect upon the frontiers ; and Ferdinand needed the 
help of the princes, who, however, insisted upon religious 
liberty as the condition of their giving it. Thus was af- 
fected the peace of Nuremberg, in 1532, which may be 
regarded as a spiritual armistice, for it merely protracted 
the decision of their cause. Of this interval the Protest- 
ants made good use. As early as in 1521, Albert of 
Brandenburg had resigned his office as grand master of the 
Teutonic Knights, and had come over to Protestantism in 
his temporal capacity as duke of Prussia. To the countries 
already named as in the Protestant interest were now 
added Wirtemberg, Pomerania, Denmai'k, Schwarzburg, 
and Nassau, whose princes favored the introduction of the 
Reformation within their respective territories. With 
these might be enumerated many independent cities. The 
Reformation had also many adherents in countries whose 



268 HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION. 

rulers remained firm to tlie Romish Church, as in Austria, 
Bavaria, Bohemia, Silesia, etc. In Sweden, the diet of 
"Westeras, in 1527, declared for the new doctrine. In 
England, partly through Luther's writings, and partly 
through the quarrel of Henry YIII. with the pope, it was 
favored by a very large party. In Poland, Hungary, 
and Transylvania, numerous Protestant communities were 
formed and subsisted amid oppression and persecution. 
In France, where Francis I. persecuted the reformed, at 
the very time when, from political hatred to Charles V., 
he was encouraging the Protestants in Germany, the puri- 
fied part of the church obtained a firm footing ; and even 
in Italy and Spain there were numerous friends of Luther, 
who were only kept under by the violent severities of the 
Inquisition. 

Many monasteries in Germany were dissolved at the 
Reformation, and many ecclesiastical institutions applied to 
better purposes. Monks and nuns now entered upon the 
married life ; the invocation of saints, and especially of 
the Virgin Mary, was done away ; and of the seven sacra- 
ments two only were retained. The pope's infallibility 
was no longer regarded ; but the word of God alone was 
made the ultimate ground of appeal in matters of faith ; 
ecclesiastical tradition was submitted to the decision of 
holy writ, instead of the latter being, as heretofore, inter- 
preted by the former. In the place of masses in the Latin 
language, which not unfrequently constituted the whole of 
the church service, sermons in the vernacular tongue were 
substituted : and for the schools, in which a new and better 
generation was to be educated, Luther wrote his greater 
and lesser catechisms ; those masterly works, which by the 
divine blessing are to this day productive of so much bene- 
fit to the young. But more important than any of these 
exterior arrangements, though in part closely connected 
with them, was the setting up, especially by Luther's 
ministry, of the first grand principle of the evangelical 



HISTORY OFJTHE REFORMATION. 269 

church, the doctrine of free grace ; or salvation without the 
merit of marCs works. The notion of justification from sin, 
by our works or deservings, was the palladium of the 
Romish Church, the very life of all her abuses, and of her 
deep apostasy. No spiritual change of mind and renewal 
of heart were required by her, but external works and 
sacrifices. The Reformed Church, on the contrary, teaches 
salvation through faith in Christ ; consequently, a renova- 
tion of the heart, which man cannot eflfect, but God only. 
Therefore, she directs men immediately to God himself, 
who has become nigh to us in Christ ; and suffers them not 
to seek their peace and happiness in anything else but 
reconciliation to God through him. This was the doctrine 
of the apostles themselves, from which the Roman Catholic 
Church had fallen away. 

In this prime doctrine of the Reformation the Swiss 
reformers fully agreed with those in Saxony; but they 
were at issue with them on the point of the presence of 
the body and blood of Christ in the sacrament of the 
Lord's supper : and the controversy between Luther and 
Zwingle upon this subject was carried on with such vehe- 
mence, that even the more accommodating views of Calvin 
could form no adjustment between them. The honesty of 
the two opponents, throughout the whole cntroversy, was 
unquestionable: they were equally unwilling to give up 
anything which they believed to be truth ; but the inte- 
rests of the Reformation were unspeakably injured through 
this controversy; its powers were divided, and thereby 
weakened ; and thus the progress of the truth was hin- 
dered. Had the Protestants been united among them- 
selves, they would have gained a much more firm and 
commanding position ; and, doubtless, the Reformation 
itself would have been of a much wider extent. But thus 
it was evinced at the very outset, that it was allied with 
human infirmity. 

Meantime, in Switzerland, the Reformed and the 



270 HrSTORY OF THE REFOtJMATION. 

Popish cantons had come to an open religious war, much i| 
as Zwingle labored to preserve peace. He himself was 
obliged to accompany the army as chaplain, and was slain 
at the battle of Kappel, in 1531. But a treaty of peace 
was concluded that same year, which left the Refoi-med in 
possession of religious liberty. The loss of Zwingle was 
replaced by John Calvin, a man of undaunted and inflexi- 
ble character, great abilities, and deep acquaintance with 
the Scriptures. He resided at Geneva, but his acti\Tity was 
felt throughout Switzerland, the Netherlands, England, 
and Scotland. In Geneva he had such great influence, 
that his opinion was regarded as decisive, not only in 
church matters, but also in those of the state. Yet the 
wall of separation between the Lutherans and the Re- 
formed (for so were the two parties called) became every 
day more fixed ; and things proceeded so far that a Lu- 
theran would have no more communication with one of the 
Reformed than with a Papist. 

Every new triumph of truth provokes the power of 
darkness to fresh exertions against the kingdom of God, 
and especially by tempting men to dangerous extremes. 
In every age this temptation has been attended with more 
or less effect. The stronger and more full of sap a fruit 
tree becomes, the more cause is there to look after and 
prune away the suckers and redundant branches, that rob 
it of its productiveness. The Reformation was not free 
from such excrescences. At the time when Luther was 
concealed in the castle of Wartburg, degeneracy threat- 
ened his work at Wittenberg, through the distui'bances 
raised about church images by Dr. Carolstadt. The in- 
surrection of Miinzer proceeded further still ; and the 
fanatical follies of the Anabaptists of Miinster, in West- 
phalia, were at their height. Yet even such enthusiastic 
extremes are useful for a wai*ning to others, and teach 
them the value of sober circumspection. The Reforma- 
tion was evidently the work of God, but it was accom- 



HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION. 271 

plished by fallible man, who needed correction and purifi- 
cation : this was, no doubt, the thing God intended in per- 
mitting war to break out upon the Protestants of Ger- 
many. 

Chai'les V. himself clearly saw that the Roman Catholic 
Church needed cleansing and amendment : but his notion 
was, that such amendment must be attempted by the 
higher powers. Of the spiritual force of that diyine truth, 
which had made for itself a way by the Reformation, he 
had no idea ; he supjDOsed his imperial authority would 
soon brmg everything back into the right direction. He 
never imagined the possibility of a continued opposition ; 
but thought, if he could but first get his empire into a state 
of settled security fi-om ^vithout. that he should be able, 
without molestation, to attend to the aifairs of Germany, 
and then would he soon dispatch business with the Pro- 
testants ; for he was never accustomed to bear contradic- 
tion. Li the mean time he endeavored, by diets, public 
religious disputations, and, at length, by a long-promised 
general council, to compose these important differences. 
But when all had proved of no avail, when the Protestants 
had refused to send deputies to the council, because they 
well knew what would be the result, and when their 
princes had made prepai-ations, and a league among them- 
selves, in case of a war, he at length determined to chas- 
tise them for contumacy by force of arms. Luther did not 
live to see the outbreaking of hostilities : his work was 
ended on the 18th of February, 1546, after he had borne, 
with blessed success, the burden and heat of the day. In 
that same yeai\ the army of the league of Smalcald marched 
against the emperor, who was stationed with his troops in 
Bavaria. It would have been easy to defeat him, had 
unity of plan and \nse management prevailed among 
the pi*inces themselves ; but, from a foolish mutual jea- 
lousy, they had neglected to choose one of their number 
to take the lead, and thus the best opportunity was suffered 



272 HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION. 

to slip by unimproved. Meanwhile, Duke Maurice, of 
Saxony, having made himself master of the electoral ter- 
ritories, the elector, John Frederic, left the army of the 
league, to go and recover his hereditary dominions. 
Charles found it easy to defeat the rest ; they were com- 
pelled to retreat, and the next year he himself marched 
into Saxony ; attacked by surprise, on the 24th of April, 
1547, the army of John Frederic, near Miihlberg; swept 
it away, and made the elector his prisoner. In like man- 
ner was the landgrave, Philip of Hesse, compelled to sub- 
mit to the emperor, and both of these princes remained 
several years in captivity, while Maurice had become elec- 
tor of Saxony. 

The league of Smalcald being thus abolished, the em- 
peror was now able to fulfill, without opposition, the pro- 
mise he had given the pope, of extirpating the Protestant 
religion in Germany. But probably he had seen that its 
doctrines had become too deeply rooted in the hearts of 
the people, and that he might, after all, be a loser by 
harsh conduct ; probably God had put a fear into his 
heart respecting it ; for he once more had recourse to con- 
ciliatory measures. By his command a convention of 
Roman Catholic and Protestant delegates were summoned 
at Augsburg, and drew up that neutral document of ac- 
commodation between Popish and Protestant doctrine and 
discipline, which was called the Interim, because it was to 
serve in the meanwhile for pacific purposes, as the general 
rule for religious belief throughout Germany, till the de- 
cisions of the council of Trent should be known. Charles, 
by sanctioning such a thing, doubtless gave a hint to that 
council itself, that it would be requisite to proceed with 
moderation, and that he himself wished to see many an 
alteration effected in the church. But, by such a trim- 
ming half-measure, it was found impossible to satisfy either 
the Protestants or the Romanists ; and its introduction was 
almost everywhere opposed. The imperious language of 



HISTORY OP THE REFORMATION. 273 

prerogative, which Charles, in the consciousness of his 
power, made use of at the diets, added to the difficulty, 
and made the princes seriously concerned for their rights 
and liberties. Maurice, likewise, was uneasy about the 
misfortunes of his uncle John Frederic, in which he also 
bore a guilty part, and about the decline of the Protestant 
interest, to which he from conviction belonged ; for he him- 
self had not consented to accept the Interim. He, there- 
fore, secretly meditated a decisive blow at the emperor, in 
order to compel him both to liberate the captive princes, 
and to show greater lenity toward the Protestants in ge- 
neral. With the utmost quietness, but, as it were, with 
the rapidity of lightning, he had marched his army to Inns- 
pruck, where Charles was then residing; and with the 
greatest speed was the latter, in the night and the fog, 
compelled to flee before him. It was now Maurice's turn 
to dictate conditions ; and unaccustomed, as the haughty 
emperor felt himself, to be obliged to yield to one of his 
own princes, yet hereby w^as effected the treaty of Passaic, 
by which the landgrave Philip was set at liberty, and the 
Protestants were allowed greater freedom till the decision 
of the next diet. These events occurred in the year 1552, 
before which John Frederic had been liberated. The In- 
terim was now abolished, and at the diet of Augsburg a 
peace was concluded concerning matters of religion. By 
this peace the Protestants of Germany w^ere allowed the 
free exercise of their religion. Charles had likewise, 
during the last few years of his reign, a variety of difficul- 
ties to encounter with tlie Turks, and with France, with- 
out gaining much advantage by them ; and one humilia- 
tion after another came upon him. Wearied, at length, 
and disgusted with such contests and troubles, he resigned 
the government, and gave the Netherlands and Spain to 
his son Philip IL, 1555-6, and the imperial throne of 
Germany to his brother Ferdinand I. He himself retired 
into a monastic hermitage in Spain, where he died, in the 
12* 



274 HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION. 

year 1558. The light of evangelical truth had often ap- 
proached very near him in the course of his public life, 
and repeatedly had he heard it proclaimed by some of the 
most powerful servants of God in his day ; but there is no 
evidence of its having made any impression upon his heart ; 
at least the report that he died trusting in the free mercy 
of God in Christ Jesus is not satisfactorily attested. How 
great a person and blessing might this man have been, had 
he put himself at the head of that great work which God 
was carrying on before his eyes ! 

The elector Maurice died previously, 1553, in battle 
against the savage and plundering Albert, the margrave 
of Brandenburg. He was a prince of considerable talent 
and political wisdom, as well as a courageous general ; 
yet, after all, his character was ambiguous. His last prayer 
discovers more personal feeling on the subject of religion 
than clear knowledge of evangelical truth. 

Great changes took place in the countries where the 
Reformation gained permanent footing ; especially in Ger- 
many, where it had early found entrance, and taken deep 
root. Not only Luther, by his translation of the Bible, 
but the Reformation in general, by the introduction of 
preaching in the vernacular tongue, and by the establish- 
ment of numerous schools, was of the greatest service in 
advancing the settlement and refinement of the German 
language, the ditfusion of general knowledge, and the pro- 
gress of science. Congregational psalmody, the practice 
of catechising, and other edifying institutions, are to be 
traced to this as the period of their origin. For the estab- 
lishing of schools, universities, and theological seminaries, 
etc., means were obtained by the appropriation of rich 
convents, abbeys, and bishoprics, that hitherto had served 
to cherish the indolence, luxury, and licentiousness of the 
ecclesiastics. Moreover, there was no longer any neces- 
sity for sending large yearly sums of money to Rome, as 
hitherto had been the custom ; for all connection with the 



HISTORY 0¥ THE REFORMATION. 275 

pope had ceased, and the supreme decision in church af- 
fairs, the nomination to benefices, dispensations, and the 
like, in the Protestant countries, were now consigned to 
their respective temporal sovereigns. The connection 
also betAveen the clergy and the laity was quite altered. 
The great distance at which the ecclesiastics had hitherto 
stood from the people now disappeared; the clergyman 
came into closer alliance with his flock, as a teacher and 
under shepherd of souls. A strong distinction had before 
been kept up between the person of a priest and that of a 
layman, as if the badness of the man was not to be ac- 
counted the badness of the priest. It was very different 
now on the prmciples of the Reformation ; for the clergy- 
man had henceforth to stand or fall by the opinion of his 
fellow-men, and to give effect to his word by his own per- 
sonal worth and blameless conduct. As the pope had lost 
his infallibility, so the priests could not expect to retain 
theirs. What they taught was now no longer believed, 
because they were priests of the church ; but every private 
individual had access for himself to the word of God, that 
fountain of Christian truth, and with it the right of trying 
the preacher's doctrine, whether it were agreeable to thai 
word. 

So extensive and influential were the consequences of 
tlie Reformation, that they even affected that church wliich 
most abhorred its principles, and which has all along sought 
to smother them. While the Romish Church stood abso- 
lute, and received from all the western world the name 
of Catholic, the pope and his bishops could exercise tyran- 
nical dominion over the laity, without fear of its being 
wrested from their hands ; for whither could the oppressed 
flee from these oppressors ? But noAV an asylum was 
opened for all who had any cause of dissatisfaction with 
ecclesiastical superiors ; and the liberty held out to them 
on the part of the Protestants, besides other advantages, 
could not bTit appear inviting to the human heart, which 



276 HISTORY OF THE REiOKMATlON. 

naturally loves liberty. Hence the popes and bishops 
Ibund it necessary to behave more prudently and forbear- 
ingly toward the bulk of the people, in order to avoid 
provoking them to a total secession. And the education^ 
learning, blameless character, and ministerial activity of 
the Protestant clergy, required that the Roman Catholic 
priests, especially in the countries where the two churches 
were in contact, should not be behind them, lest by compari- 
son they should entirely sink in public opinion. It is more 
especially to this state of things that the Popish Church is 
indebted for the introduction of preaching in her congrega- 
tions. Nor were the Holy Scriptures themselves entirely 
confined to the Protestants, but came frequently into the 
hands of the Roman Catholics, who also had their share 
in all those advances of science and useful knowledge whicli 
we owe to the Reformation. 

That the Romish Church has never acknowledged this 
debt is no more than was to be expected from the nature of 
the ca,se ; indeed, as early as the council of Trent, she 
openly showed that she never would do it. For that 
council, at its second sitting, in 1546, anathematized the 
Protestants ; and all its subsequent conclusions proceeded 
in the same spirit. Pope Pius Y., between the years 1565 
and 1572, published his bull " //? Cmna Domini,'' which 
was afterward read in all Romish congregations once 
every year, upon Maundy Thursday, and which solemnly 
denounces damnation upon all heretics and protectors of 
heretics; and with equal solemnity declares all princes 
amenable to the pope's supremacy. 

As the separation of the Protestants from the Romish 
Church was signified by the council of Trent to be irre- 
concilable, so was likewise the division between the 
Reformed and the Lutherans formally pronounced, by the 
concordat of 1580, an important circumstance. This had 
a decided influence, not only upon the ecclesiastial relations 
of the Protestants, but also upon their political destmation. 



HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION. 277 

As the Papacy had lost, by the Reformation, so import- 
ant a portion of its dominion, the institution of the order 
of Jesuits, whose plans and operations promised no small 
indemnification of this loss, could not but be welcomed by 
it in the highest degi*ee. A Spaniard, named Ignatius 
Loyola, founded this order in the year 1534; and the 
succeeding generals of the order introduced its laws and 
regulations. The vow of implicit obedience to its general 
distinguished it above every other religious fraternity. 
The strenuous endeavors of its members to get into their 
own hands the superintendence of all education, and to 
occupy the place of confessors or chaplains, especially in 
families of the higher classes, obtained for it an unexampled 
influence. Literary attainments and pleasing manners, 
refined and prudent conduct, were its letters of recom- 
mendation to such places of trust ; cunning calculation, 
and lying in wait for circumstances, were its fundamental 
principles ; its morality was self-interest ; a prudent dis- 
ti-ibution of its members to the most suitable stations, and 
artful connection and communication with one another, so 
as to work together like one man for one grand object, was 
its universal policy. Everything was to be made sub- 
servient to the strengthening and extension of the Romish 
Church and the influence of the Papacy ; and as so many 
thousand individuals gave themselves up implicitly as 
instruments to be made use of for such an object, it may 
easily be imagined what a spirit animated them to make 
everything of their own subordinate to this single aim, 
and to act like the multifarious wheels of a great machine, 
in continual harmony. This order, at its most flourishing 
period, had fourteen hundred colleges, and more than 
twenty-two thousand members. Its efliciency has been 
great and comprehensive; and what was predicted re- 
specting it by its general, Francis Borgia, who died in the 
year 1572, has to this day been too truly and accurately 
realized, namely : — 



278 HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION^ 

'' We have come in like lambs ; 
We shall rule like wolves ; 
We shall be driven out like dogs 
We shall be i-enewed like the eagles." 



(d.) Ferdinand I. and Maximilian 11. 

Ferdinand I., who succeeded his brother Charles V. 
in the empire of Germany, was a man of pacific measures, 
whose treatment of his Protestant subjects was neither 
harsh nor unreasonable ; though amid the variety of con- 
troversies maintained by the Protestants among themselves, 
he might perhaps have found occasion to be both. His 
reign continued only till 1564; and his son, Maximilian 
II., a prince of the same mild character, was his successor. 
Under this emperor the Protestants in Germany enjoyed 
freedom from outward molestation, but were only the more 
at variance among themselves. No sooner had the con- 
ciliatory spirit of Melancthon, who had hitherto contrived 
to preserve peace, left the earth, in 1563, than controvei'- 
sies broke out unrestrained, and the noble work of God 
was disfigured by jarring theologians. 

How free Maximilian II. was from narrow-hearted 
bigotry is evinced by his opposition to the insinuating and 
intriguing policy of the pope and the Jesuits, by his con- 
fidential friendship with the truly noble duke, Christopher 
of Wiirtemberg, a decided friend of the Reformation ; and 
by the permission he gave the Protestants to have a 
minister and a house of prayer in Vienna itself. He would 
neither exercise dominion over conscience, nor allow others 
to do it, because he ascribed this right to God alone. His 
death, A. D. 1576, was universally and sincerely lamented ; 
and the more so, as his successor, Rudolph II., 1576-1612, 
though a good-natured and well-informed man, had too 
little of the decision and vigor of a competent governor, 
and had not the resolution to make his private inclinations 
yield to his public duties ; moreover, he followed too slav- 



HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION. 279 



ishly the counsel obtruded on him by the Jesuits. Thus, 
the German princes being left to themselves, a state of 
disquietude throughout the whole country, and of mutual 
grievances and disunion among the principalities, gradually 
ensued; and herefrom, in the year 1609, proceeded the 
double alliance of the German princes ; the league which 
embraced the Roman Catholic princes, and the union 
which comprised those of the Protestants : the latter, how- 
ever, was exclusive of the electorate of Saxony. Thus 
were laid in the bosom of the empire the combustible 
materials of that religious war which soon afterward deso- 
lated all Germany ; and the Protestants of Bohemia and 
Silesia were not allowed to enjoy those advantages of the 
free exercise of their religion which they had wrested 
from the emperor, Rudolph, in his so-called letters patent 
in the year 1609. Rudolph himself falling a sacrifice to 
his own caprice and indecision, was obliged to give up one 
territory after another to his own brother, Matthias ; who, 
by and by, after Rudolph's death, obtained the imperial 
crown, in 1612, but did very little better than his pre- 
decessor. 

(e.) The Hugoiiots in Fiance. 

While the Reformation in Germany, under the govern- 
ment of reasonable emperors, among whom, in so far as he 
did not absolutely persecute, we may number Charles V. 
himself, was permitted to develop and spread, to take root 
downward and bear fruit upward, the history of the Pro- 
testants in France, at the same period, was one of extreme 
sufferings. Francis I., who reigned from A. D. 1515 to 
1547, was a chivalrous soldier, but no soldier of Jesus 
Christ. He was concerned merely for his own interest, 
not for the honor of God ; he persecuted his Protestant 
subjects, who had allied themselves to the Reformation in 
Switzerland, and even connived at some of them being 
burnt alive. The new plant of the Reformation had found 



280 HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION. 

a fruitful soil in France, where there still remained Wal- 
denses ; and, as early as 1521, a church of evangelical 
Christians, who were known by the name of Hugonots, had 
been formed at Meaux ; but as fast as its adherents spread 
abroad throughout France, Francis was alert in their rear 
to extirpate them ; and persecutions for this purpose con- 
tinued, almost without intermission, during the whole of 
his reign. Twenty-two towns and villages of the Hugonots 
in Provence were burnt or destroyed, and their inhabitants 
were massacred with the most horrible barbarities. Under 
his successors, Henry IL, Francis II., Charles IX., and 
Henry III., the oppression of the Protestants went on with 
little intermission, and the most atrocious cruelties were 
practiced upon them. Of these the Paris massacre, on the 
night of St. Bartholomew, in 1572, instigated by King 
Charles IX., or rather by his mother, Catharine de Me- 
dicis, is a most striking proof to what lengths of iniquity 
hatred of religion can carry those who follow the inclina- 
tions of their own corrupt hearts, and what sort of value 
Popery itself has set upon human life. In that single night 
more than sixty thousand persons were surprised and mur- 
dered in Paris and at other places, among whom was 
Admiral de Coligny, the noble champion of the Protestants 
in France. This enormous massacre was perpetrated upon 
them for no other reason than because they held a different 
religious belief ; and Pope Gregory XIII. testified his joy 
on the occasion by great festivities. The Hugonots, like 
the Hussites in Bohemia, long before them, had previously 
taken up arms for obtaining religious liberty; and some 
princes of the blood had joined them in this contest.* The 

* And to this very thing, both the great Bengal and Sauriii 
ascribe their principal temporal troubles, as a chastisement from 
God for having herein acted so differently from the persecuted Chris- 
tians of the primitive times, through forgetting ono of the main prm- 
ciples of our holy religion, and violating the express command of 
our blessed Saviour himself. Matt, x, 23 ; xxvi, 52. — Trans. 



HISTORY OP THE REFORMATION. 281 

treatment they met with, which had for its object the ex- 
tinction of all Hugonots in France at one blow, was not 
likely to restore peace. Therefore, in the next year, the 
war broke out afresh : parties and leagues were formed 
both at court and among the people ; and France became 
a, scene of entire confusion, till, in the year 1589, the 
reins of government were assumed by Henry IV., who 
hitherto, as king of Navarre, had himself defended in arms 
the cause of the Protestants, and had risked his life for his 
faith. "With him the throne of France became hereditary 
in the house of Bourbon, a collateral branch of the house 
of Valois. It is easy to comprehend why the acknow- 
ledgment of Henry's right to the succession met with so 
much opposition from the majority of the Roman Catholics, 
in consequence of which he had to contend for it a long 
time. That he, in order to gain over his enemies, sacri- 
ficed his religious profession and went over to the Romish 
Church, though still remaining a Protestant in his heart, 
who will not regret ? Surely none but a Jesuit, or he who 
justifies evil as a means for the sake of specious good as 
its end ; or some reckless worldling, who regards a throne 
as more valuable than peace of conscience. That Henry IV. 
did not take this long-considered step from motives of am- 
bition or covetousness, we may perhaps allow ; he may 
have thought, that, as king of France, he should have it in 
his power to obtain religious liberty for the Protestants ; 
and that this was reason enough for his even venturing to 
go over to the Romish Church. But Christ requires every 
one personally to profess the truth ; and God can and will 
protect or support his people when they keep in the direct 
way of truth. He may have meant well ; but his policy 
was sinful: a' id supposing his excellent government made 
amends for this false step before men, yet that could never 
make it good in the sight of God. In the year 1598 he 
issued the celebrated edict of Nantes, which not only se- 
cured full religious Hberty to the Protestants, but likewise 



282 HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION. 

threw open to them the offices of state. It was his anxious 
wish to restore tranquillity and prosperity to his whole 
realm ; and in this he was very powerfully supported by 
his equally distinguished minister, Sully. He took care 
to have the taxes reduced as low as possible, and to set an 
example of rigid economy; agriculture and commercial 
intercourse were advanced, and everything was done for 
the restoration of general contentment and comfort. In 
the latter part of his life he was busily occupied in planning 
a Christian state alliance, which was to consist of fifteen 
national governments of equal magnitude and importance, 
and having for its object the preservation of peace, and a 
balance of power in Europe. All were to bind themselves 
to chastise any single state that should be disposed to break 
the peace. Whether it was to prevent the formation of a 
new universal monarchy that put him upon this plan, 
or whether he was also moved to it by that jealousy of the 
predominance possessed in Spain and Germany by the 
house of Hapsburg, which had dictated the French policy 
ever since the reign of Francis I. ; we cannot but wonder 
how a man of his excellent understanding could put his 
whole soul into such a scheme. How could he imagine 
that the several states of Europe would acquiesce in such 
a distribution, and in some instances diminution, of their 
respective powers, or that such an arrangement, even if 
effected, could be durable, considering it would owe its 
existence to the mere constraint of an armed majority? 
Just at the time when he was meditating the trial of it in 
Austria, in the fifty-sixth year of his age, and while he 
was still in vigor, A. D. 1610, he died by the hand of an 
assassin, named Ravaillac. In the ensuing regency, during 
the minority of Louis XIIL, vexatious attempts were 
renewed against the Hugonots ; the flame of civil war was 
rekindled, and the Protestants were gradually deprived of 
all their strong places, till, in the year 1628, Rochelle, the 



HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION. 283 

last of these, was taken and reduced ; but they still were 
j>ermitted to enjoy liberty of conscience. 

(f.) The Reformation in England and Scotland. 

In England Henry VIII. had introduced the Reforma- ^ 
tion ; but the immediate sequel showed how much a good 
work is weakened when the great and powerful them- 
selves are not attached to it with their whole heart. Had 
he been a pious man, who from conscientious motives had 
taken part in the Reformation, then might that great work 
in England have spread most flourishingly under his pro^ 
tection, especially as Wiclif had long before prepared the 
way for it among the mass of the people. Whereas, the 
main occasion of his separating from the pope was his dis- \ 
satisfaction with him for refusing to sanction the divorce : 
of his queen, when he desired to marry another. Hereupon \ 
Henry resolved to become entirely independent of Papal au- 
thority, the enormities of which he now proclaimed. He 
declared himself head of the Anglican Church ; he alloAved 
no more money to be sent from England to Rome, nor any 
mandates from Rome to be received in England ; he dis- 
solved the monasteries and ecclesiastical houses, which 
had, for the most part, become dens of corruption, and 
against which the nation cried aloud ; and he caused an 
English translation of the Scriptures to be printed. Yet 
he would not acknowledge the principles of the German 
Reformation; and he caused books of doctrine to be set 
forth, which were not entirely in accordance with Scrip- 
tural truth. He caused alike both the Papists, who per- 
sisted in adhering to the authority of the pope against his 
own, and the Reformed, who wished to reject all the doc- 
trinal errors of Popery, to be publicly put to death. This 
was not the way to recommend and gain a general accept- 
ance for the Reformation : yet, withal, an important opening 
and prepai-ation were made for it; the Papal power in 



284 HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION. 

England was broken, and during the short reign of hie 
young son and successor, Edward VI., A. D. 1547-1553, 
that pious and hopeful youth, who might be compared to 
King Josiah, Archbishop Cranmer, who held much con- 
fidential intercourse respecting his proceedings with the 
German and other reformers, was enabled to carry on a 
more effectual amendment of the English Church. 

But the heaviest trials often remain to be undergone, 
when we are apt to think we have surmounted the worst. 
When the newly scattered seed had not only sprung up, 
but risen to something more than the young green blade, 
a violent storm blew over it, upon the succession of Mary, 
the daughter of Henry VIII. by his first marriage, to the 
throne. She was a gloomy adherent to the Popish super- 
stitions, and her marriage with the bigoted PhiHp 11. of 
Spain served to confirm and strengthen her in her san- 
guinary notions and proceedings. During her reign, from 
looo to 1558, the Papal authority was restored in Eng- 
land ; all sincere Protestants were obliged to flee or conceal 
themselves, and many of them were cruelly executed; 
\ among whom were Archbishop Cranmer, and Bishops Rid- 
: ley and Latimer, who died martyrs at the stake : nearly three 
hundred of various ranks were burned alive in three years. 
■^ For the relief of England, Mary was soon removed by 
a natural death, and the crown devolved upon Elizabeth, 
another daughter of Henry VIII., who had all along fa- 
vored the Reformation, and who, immediately upon her 
accession to the throne, abolished the pope's authority and 
the Roman Catholic worship. Under her government the 
present Anglican Episcopal Church was settled, which 
agrees, in the main, with the doctrines of the Reformation 
on the continent ; but in its formularies and ecclesiastical 
arrangements coincides with neither of the two continental 
reformed branches, and retains some ceremonies which 
part of the ecclesiastical body in England disapproved of; 
and hence arose the Puritans. 



HISTORY OP THE REFORMATION. 285 

How far Queen Elizabeth herself was mfluenced by 
personal piety is not for us to determine : her reign, how- 
ever, was a period of prosperity and splendor in England. 
Manufactures, commerce, and every sort of national wealth, 
increased under her government; several voyages wero 
made round the globe, and great treasure was obtained as 
booty by the way. The immense naval armament, called 
the invincible armada, of Philip II. of Spain, was dispersed 
by the aid of a tempest, and most of it destroyed, A. D. 
1588, when both the queen and her subjects gave God the 
glory for this deliverance. 

In Scotland, the youthful Patrick Hamilton preached 
the doctrines of the Reformation, and was burned alive for 
it in 1528. Others followed him in the same track of 
martyrdom: nevertheless, such cruelties did not in the 
least suppress the desire of reformation which was felt by 
the people at large, and especially by many of the nobility. 
What could not be effected by remonstrance and petition, 
they sought to accomplish by other means, in self-defense ; 
and things proceeded with such decision, that, by the year 
1547, John Knox, a friend and fellow disciple of Calvin 
at Geneva, was able to preach the gospel to his own 
countrymen with little molestation. The Church of 
Scotland owes her religious liberty chiefly to the undaunt- 
ed courage and inflexibility of this eminent man. The 
then queen of Scotland, Mary Stuart, who for a short 
time had been queen of France, as consort of Francis II., 
was very much attached to the Romish Church ; but the 
power of her Protestant-minded nobility had become too 
gi'eat for her to resist ; and she herself had so weakened 
her influence, by her levity and notorious offenses against 
the dignity of royalty, and by her breaches of human and 
divine law, that she had no power to check the prevailing 
cause of the Reformation. 

As early as the year 1560, the Confession of Faith, and 
the Presbyterian form of government, which in the Church 



286 HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION. 

of Scotland retain in substance their validity to the present 
day, were introduced into that country. Mary had to hear 
strong remonstrances personally uttered to her by Knox ; 
and, had she heeded such foithful and plain dealing, she 
might have been spared many an infliction still more severe. 
After she had suffered herself to stand in several connec- 
tions of a very suspicious nature, and had been even 
accused, and not without reason, of having been implicated 
in the murder of Lord Darnley, her second husband, she 
was obliged at length to resign the government, and impru- 
dently fled into the territory of her cousin. Queen Eliza- 
beth of England, who was not upon good tenns with her, 
from her having claimed the throne of England, and who 
caused her to be detained. Conspiracies were set on foot 
in favor of this unhappy queen, and to restore Popery, 
which threatened the life of Elizabeth ; and these were the 
cause, after long deliberation, of Mary's being beheaded. 
That Mary was really connected with these conspiracies, 
the most recent inquiries do not permit us to doubt; never- 
theless her execution was, to say the least, a very question- 
able measure. 

Elizabeth died in the year 1 603, after a reign of forty- 
five years. Her general character was a strange compound 
of feminine weakness and masculine firmness ; but the lat- 
ter decidedly prevailed. If, in one and the same public 
character, we may distinguish the good qualities of the 
ruler from those of the person, then we may say, that 
Elizabeth possessed the former in a far greater degree 
than the latter. As she lived unmarried, her successor 
was James, king of Scotland, the son of Mary Stuart ; a 
man of a pedantic character, who knew not how to gain 
the affection of his subjects. The Romanists of England 
had set great hopes upon him, for he himself was not un- 
favorable in his heart to some doctrines of Romanism ; but 
his own natural vacillation, and the prudent fear of oppo- 
sition from the powerful Protestant party, restrained him 



HISTORY OF THE EEFOKMATION. 287 

from taking any decisive steps in favor of the former. 
The Romish party, however, became bitterly incensed 
against him and his parliament : and the well-known gun- 
powder plot, which was attributed to the Jesuits, was in- 
tended to get rid of both him and them in one day ; but was 
providentially discovered just in time to save the realm, 
A. D. 1605. In his reign Scotland was united to 
England, though for a long time it continued to have a 
parliament and laws of its own. In no country did the 
Reformation obtain so sure and permanent a footing as in 
Britain, which country has remained the chief upholder of 
evangelical truth. 

(g.) Portugal, Spain, Italy, and other countries at the Reformatiov. 

Portugal, through her discovery of the passage to India, 
her possession of Brazil, and the brisk commerce which 
thence arose, and which made Lisbon for a time the first 
commercial city in Europe, had become rich and powerful, 
and had her most flourishing period in the first half 
of the sixteenth century. But the influence of the Je- 
suits soon brought her down from her eminence ; and, in 
the year 1581, she even came under the dominion of 
Spain, from which she was not liberated till the year 
1640. 

. Spain, at this period, was at the zenith of her power. 
Charles V., and his son Philip II., could say, w^hat the 
queen of England may now say, that the sun never set in 
their dominions ; but, at the same time, they used all their 
exertions that the sun of true knowledge should never rise 
in them. Naples and Sicily, Burgundy and the Nether- 
lands, Milan and Sardinia, the Canaries and the richest 
West India islands, Mexico and Peru, Chili and the Philip- 
pines, Spain and Portugal, were under the sceptre of 
Philip II. ; and if power and wealth could make a country 
happy, then Spain would have experienced no want of 
happiness. Gold and silver came to her in abundance from 



288 HISTORY OP THE REFORMATION. 

America. But with all this there was no prosperity, for 
there was no divine blessing. Philip was a bigoted, 
gloomy man, and allowed the Inquisition to rage without 
restraint in his country, for the purpose of extinguishing 
that light of the gospel which had entered it. The num- 
ber of the evangelically minded had so increased in many 
of the cities and towns of Spain, about the middle of the 
sixteenth century, that the Inquisition had enough to do 
to stop the further spread of the Lutheran doctrine, and a 
multitude of its adherents were publicly burned alive. 
Philip, however, on the other hand, had to undergo all 
sorts of calamities. The united Netherlands revolted 
from his government ; his own son, Don Carlos, rebelled 
against him,* and died in prison ; his invincible armada, 
which he sent against England, was dispersed in a storm, 
and nearly annihilated. The guilt of the blood of many 
thousands of innocent and barbarously murdered Protest- 
ants allowed him no repose, and lay also as a heavy bur- 
den upon his nation, which, at the end of his reign, was 
sunk away from its former eminence to a state of degra- 
dation, from which his son Philip III., who reigned 
1598 to 1621, strove in vain to recover it. In Philip II. 
we may also witness one striking instance of the true 
remark, that it is not gold, but the blessing of the Lord, 
that maketh rich. With all this monarch's abundant trea- 
sure that was brought him from America, he had, at last, 
a debt amounting to more than eight hundred millions of 
florins, or more than three hunded millions of dollars ; and 
was obliged to get money collected for him from house to 
house. 

In Italy, the once free cities of Milan, Genoa, Venice, 
etc., had become the hereditary dominions of single power- 
ful families within them. The quarrels of these families 

* According to other accounts he was falsely accused of doing so, 
and was executed by his father's command. 



HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION. 289 

with one another, as also with the cities themselves, 
together with their sharing in the struggles maintained 
against the pope by the great princes of Germany, France, 
and Spain, formed an unpleasing and involved tissue of 
history, wherein selfishness shows itself accompanied with 
all kinds of intrigues and vices. The flourishing state of 
the arts and sciences, which marks this period of Italian 
history, proved no remedy whatever against the evils of 
which we complain ; and which were too deeply rooted to 
be removed by any such means. The stir that was made 
in various parts of that country in favor of the Reforma- 
tion, which had been cherished by such worthies as Oc- 
chino, Curio, Vergerius, and Palearius, and others, and 
had found its way even to Naples, was soon extinguished 
by Papal vigilance, and the murderous activity of the 
Inquisition. The readiness with which the principles 
of the Reformation were received in Italy and Spain 
shows how extensive was the influence of this great reli- 
gious movement, and what a dissatisfaction generally 
prevailed respecting the Papacy. It could not but show 
itself in the very precincts of the Roman Catholic Church. 
While Charles V. was consolidating a vast portion of 
the West under his imperial authority, and thus recalling 
to men's minds the old universal empire, there was ex- 
hibited in the East, in the Turkish suhan, Soliman II., who 
came to the throne at the same time with Charles, a simi- 
lar endeavor to obtain the monarchy of the world. Hap- 
pily, however, the ambition of these great princes so 
obstructed each other, that one could not fail to force back 
the other within his proper limits. The sultan, Sclim I., 
A. D. 1512-1519, had established and extended the Ottoman 
empire, and Soliman II., A. D. 1519-1566, proceeded in 
the same career. He was a spirited warrior and an ex- 
perienced politician, but a man of violent temper, and who 
sometimes practiced cruelty. He took Belgrade, which 
was the kev to Europe ; he expelled the knights of St. 

13 



290 HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION. 

John, in 1522, from the island of Rhodes, which they had 
possessed for two hundred and twelve years ; he defeated 
the Hungarians in the same year that the Protestants in 
Germany concluded the league of Torgau ; and in the 
year 1529, when they protested at the diet of Spires, he 
besieged Vienna, and attacked it by storm for twenty days 
together. But God had set him a boundary, so that, after 
he had lost eighty thousand men in the attempt, he was 
obliged to raise tlie siege. Yet scarcely had he rested for 
a season, when he renewed his attack upon his old enemies, 
the knights of St. John, to whom Charles V. had granted the 
island of Malta, after their loss of Rhodes, and who have 
thence been called the knights of Malta. Here, however, La 
Valette's firm and steady conduct frustrated all Soliman's en- 
deavors, who, at the same time, suffered aloss in Persia. The 
old lion, inflamed with rage, shook his mane once more, and 
arose to devour his prey which had heretofore escaped 
him, the city of Vienna. But the heroic defense of the 
Hungarian fortress of Szigeth, maintained by the high- 
spirited Zriny, checked his course ; and his vexation, on 
account of it, cost him his life, in the year 1566. Syria, 
Palestine, Egypt, Arabia, many islands of the Mediter- 
ranean, Greece, Moldavia, Wallachia, and part of Hungary, 
belonged at that time to the Turkish empire, and its do- 
minions extended from the Euphrates to the African 
Mountains of the Moon. But now the time of its brightest 
lustre was past ; for, after this, it was but once more that 
Europe had cause to tremble at the Turks. 

Into Hungary and Transylvania the gospel had an early 
entrance ; for in these countries were found Bohemian 
Brethren and Waldenses, who had received it with joy ; 
and Hungarian youths, who had been educated in the high 
schools of Germany, brought back to their native country, 
at the same time, the first tidings and writings of the 
Reformation. Matthias Devay, a disciple of Luther and 
Martin Cyriaci, preached the pure doctrine in Hungary j 



HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION. 29^1 

John Honter did the same in Transylvania ; and, notwith- 
standing serious persecution, there were, in the year 1530, 
many Protestant churches ; and soon the greater part of 
Transylvania, and a considerable part of Hungary, were 
brought over to the Reformation. The resolution, passed 
at the diet of Pesth, to burn all Lutherans, and that of the 
diet of Presburg, to tolerate no religion but the Roman 
Catholic, had come too late ; the Reformation having al- 
ready spread too extensively to be suppressed. Subse- 
quently the Protestants even obtained an acknowledgment 
of their rights and liberties ; but they lived under Roman 
Catholic rulers, on whose favorable disposition it depended 
whether they should enjoy them unmolested ; and at no 
period were they exempt from injuries and oppressions. 
It is not improbable, that the great troubles occasioned in 
Hungary by the Turkish invasion, just at the time of the 
Reformation, were all helpful to the reception of evan- 
gelical truth. The anxiety that burdened many a mind 
was likely to be a good preparation for the comfort of the 
word of God, as making men acquainted with the true 
Deliverer, and with the prospects held out by an eternal 
redemption. The vigorous Hungarian king, Matthias 
Corvinus, was succeeded by the weak Ladislaus ; and the 
latter by Louis H., A. D. 1.516-1526. The last was de- 
feated by the Turks in the battle of Mohacz, A. D. 1526; 
from whose hands, endeavoring to escape by flight, he sunk 
in a morass, and w^as lost. After his death, Ferdinand of 
Austria, and Zapolya of Transylvania, contended for the 
crown of Hungary, the latter under the protection of the 
sultan, Soliman. The struggle continued till 1546, and 
Hungary Avas left to the possession of Austria, though 
amidst manifold contentions with the Transylvanian princes, 
and in perpetual hostility with Turkey. 

In Russia, after the deliverance of that country from 
the Mogul yoke, the grand duke Wassilji received the title 
of czar of all Russia. He and his son,Iwan, A. D. 1534- 



292 HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION. 

1584, warred with Poland, Sweden, the Moguls, and Tar- 
tars; and the latter prince conquered Astrachan and 
Siberia. But, after this, there came again a period of 
decline, till, in 1613, the sovereignty devolved to the house 
of Romanov, in the person of Michael Fedorowitsch. 

In Poland, under the Jagellonian sovereigns, Alexander, 
Sigismund, and Augustus, who reigned in succession from 
1501 to 1572, there was formed an aristocracy, that exer- 
cised its influence not only downward upon the subject, 
but also upward upon the king himself The whole popu- 
lation consisted of a very numerous nobility, and of poor 
serfs ; exactly after the manner of the middle ages. There 
was no middle rank of free, trading, and industrious citi- 
zens, but the services of such a class were gradually 
undertaken by Jews ; who, nevertheless, were unable to 
gain for themselves an independent condition. This state 
of society, which has undergone little alteration down to 
our own times, is the real source of the manifold troubles 
with which that country has been distracted, and of the sad 
afflictions which, even recently, it has experienced. Upon 
the extinction of the race of Jagellon, in 1572, Henry of 
Anjou was chosen king. He, however, only two years 
afterward, returned to France to take possession of the 
French crown, which he valued more, and which had de- 
volved on him by the death of his brother, Charles IX. 
After Stephen Bathory, of Transylvania, had possessed the 
throne of Poland, in 1586, Sigismund, king of Sweden, 
was elected to it; and, reigning till 1632, was nearly the 
whole time engaged in defensive war against Sweden. 

The Reformation quickly found its way into Poland. 
The Bohemian Brethren, who had been driven from Bo- 
hemia and Moravia, had settled there in great numbers, 
and they formed the first shelter there for the new Chris- 
tian church. As early as about the year 1520 books and 
ministers, both Lutheran and Reformed, had arrived in 
Poland, and gained considerable bodies of adherents. John, 



HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION. 293 

of Lasco, is distinguished among the Polish reformers. 
But even had they not had to encounter there the secret 
opposition of the Jesuits, the diiference of views which pre- 
vailed among the opposers of the Romish communion 
themselves, and which prevented their acting together as 
one body, -was of itself a great hinderance to the flourish- 
ing spread of Protestant truth in that country. In addition 
to the Lutheran, the Reformed, and the Bohemian Bre- 
thren, it contained many not yet united members of the 
Greek Church, Unitarians, Anabaptists, and other sects, 
all active in every direction to promote their own separate 
interests. Moreover, the Sendomir compact, which took 
place in the year 1570, and which comprised the common 
confession of faith of the Lutheran, the Reformed, and the 
Bohemian Brethren, proved insufficient entirely to remove 
disunion among them : and of this failure the Romanists 
continually availed themselves to abridge the rights of the 
Protestants, and even to persecute them ; notwithstanding 
that, by the general diet of 1573, equal rights and privi- 
leges were adjudged to all parties. 

In Sweden 2i dissatisfaction had long existed with the 
government of its Danish kings ; and when the crown, of 
Denmark came to the house of Oldenburg, in Christiern I., 
the Swedes elected their supreme rulers from among them- 
selves, and these carried on the government for fifty years ; 
namely, from 1470 to 1520. But, at this time, a party of 
their malcontents invited Christiern II., of Denmark, into 
Sweden, who thus obtained possession of the sovereignty ; 
and, by his tyranny and cruelty, brought the whole country 
into rebellion. Hence, Gustavus Vasa, who was a de- 
scendant of the ancient Swedish monarchs, put himself at 
the head of the populace, drove out the Danes, and, in 
1523, was chosen king of Sweden. He was strongly attached 
to the principles of the Reformation, and endeavored from 
the very first to promote them in his country. Laurentius, 
Olaus Petri, and Lawrence Anderson, who had already, in 



294 HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION. 

1523, translated the Scriptures into the Swedish language, 
helped him in this enterprise ; so that, at the diet of 
Westeras, in 1527, the foundation was laid for extending 
the Reformation throughout the whole country ; and, at 
the diet of 1544, Popery was superseded, and the estab- 
lished church of Sweden from that time adopted the Lu- 
theran communion. Church reform and amendment were 
advanced in this country ; and it is to be regarded as a 
fruit of its influence upon the political state of that country, 
that, in 1527, the commons, consisting of the mercantile 
and agricultural classes, became numbered among the 
estates of the realm, to whose counsels the welfare of the 
country was committed ; and this upon the same footing 
as the nobles and the clergy. The attempts of their king, 
John, A. D. 1569-1592, to make Romanism again pre- 
dominant, were frustrated by the enlightened and well- 
principled attachment with which the people in general 
held fast the liberty of their belief. The election of their 
king, Charles IX., to the exclusion of the Romish Sigis- 
mund, who had the sovereignty of Poland, occasioned that 
long war between the Poles and the Swedes, which ended 
not till the reign, and by the exertions, of Gusta\Tis 
Adolphus, A. D. 1611-1632. 

In Denmai'k, the house of Oldenburg having come to 
the throne, in 1448, conflicted long with Sweden, till the 
Swedes, at last, gained their independence of that family. 
But the same cause that rendered Christiern II. so hated 
in Sweden, namely, his intolerance toward the nobility and 
clergy, together with his meanness and barbarous cruelty, 
made him also a burden to the Danes themselves ; so that, 
in the year 1523, he was deposed from the government 
by the estates of the realm ; and Frederic I., the duke of 
Schleswick and Holstein, was chosen, and reigned as his 
successor from 1523 to 1533. This prince, in 1526, per- 
sonally gave himself to church reformation ; which, since 
1521, had been begun under much opposition, by John 



HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION. 295 

Taussan, a disciple of Luther. He at once declared him- 
self a member of the Lutheran communion ; and, at the 
diet of Odensee, in 1527, general freedom was effected for all 
confessions in Denmark. Still many hinderances remained 
in the way, especially Such as were occasioned by the 
bishops; nor was it till the reign of Christiern III., in 
1536, that the cause of Protestantism gained stability in 
,that country. After this the far greater part of the Danes 
came over to it, and the Reformation was thence propa- 
gated to Norway and Iceland. 

The Netherlands had become the property of the house 
of Hapsburg, by the marriage of Mary of Burgundy to the 
emperor Maximilian, and as such they passed into the 
hands of Charles V. They then consisted of seventeen 
flourishing provinces. A most vigorous commerce in the pro- 
ductions of the East and West had made their cities wealthy, 
and their burgesses opulent ; and Antwerp was at that time 
one of the most important commercial places in the world. 
This, in connection with their special immunities and privi- 
leges, had infused a public spirit and a love of liberty 
among the people at large, and had promoted education 
very greatly among them, so that the liberal principles of 
the Reformation soon found entrance, and obtained a foot- 
ing in many places, notwithstanding the opposition of 
Charles V. The Lutheran version of the New Testament 
was published in a Dutch retranslation as early as 1523. 
But Philip II. of Spain, to whom the sovereignty of the 
Netherlands descended from his father, was a declared foe 
to the Reformation : for as he had determined to be an 
absolute despot in his extensive and various dominions, so 
he could not brook that any one of his subjects should have 
a will or a religious belief that differed from his own ; he 
therefore resolved to annihilate, in a summary manner, not 
only the political privileges, but also the religious liberty, 
of the Netherlanders ; and for this purpose he introduced 
among them the Inquisition, and oppressed them in various 



296 HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION. 

ways. The first instrument of his tyranny was Cardinal 
Granvella ; and afterward the duke of Alva, who was as 
bigoted and gloomy a tyrant as his master. Alva brought 
to the block some of the most eminent personages in the 
country, as Count Egmont, Hoorn, etc. ; and, after the year 
1566, eighteen thousand persons perished, by his order, un- 
der the hands of the public executioner. But the Nether- 
landers, though they were too prudent and Christian- 
minded to rise against their merciless governors without 
necessity, had nevertheless been too little inured to slavery 
to endure it without resistance; and, in 1568, ten of the 
seventeen provinces, headed by the pious and prudent 
William of Orange, declared their independence. The 
necessities of commerce had already accustomed them to 
sea-fighting ; and while the Spaniards labored in vain to 
wrest back from them the lost dominion, the Netherlanders 
seized the colonies, which had belonged at first to the Por- 
tuguese, but afterward, from the year 1581, to Spain; 
they also took possession of Java, Ceylon, and the Moluc- 
cas, and with these the whole of the spice trade. The 
fierce struggle, by which the religious liberty of the north- 
eastern provinces of the Netherlands was obtained, end- 
ed not till the year 1609, when there was an armistice 
of twelve years. But the ten liberated provinces, which 
maintained their independence by the name of The 
United Netherlands, never came again under the Spanish 
yoke. 

(li.) Reflections upon this Period. 

Thus the Reformation, as militating directly against the 
political tactics of the age, had almost everywhere to make 
its way amid the opposition of temporal princes, as well as 
of that dominant church which saw her pillars one after 
another falling to the ground. While human policy every- 
where aimed at confirming its ascendency by force of num- 
bers, by standing armies, and profusion of gold, that is, by 



HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION. 297 

national power in general, the Reformation everywhere 
put the weight of intellectual and spiritual greatness into 
the scale, and tendered to the sickly nations the medicine 
of the soul. The temporal princes thought to bring more 
order and tranquillity into the affairs of political govern- 
ment by making additions to their dominions, by consoli- 
dating their ruling influence, and by contracting within 
still narrov/er limits the liberties that stood in their way ; 
but the new spirit of the age, which found vent and room 
for itself in the Reformation, sought to effect the same ob- 
ject by inward purification, and the healing of the corrupted 
elements by the improvement of the mind and soul. The 
observation of things as they came to pass at that period, 
viewed by the help of the word of God, teaches us that 
things could not possibly go on longer in the same way 
that they had done at the period immediately preceding 
the Reformation, except by the entire destruction of the 
few witnesses of the truth that still remained ; that is, ex- 
cept by the entire overthrow of the true church of Christ, 
which had been all along persecuted by the dominant 
worldly church. This dominant church, not only by su- 
perstition and vice, but also by infidelity itself, needed 
a thorough renovation, in order not to become a prey to 
entire rottenness. But a natural hatred of the light, while 
other causes account for the opposition made by the princes 
and the Romish clergy, Avas the real cause that so many 
of the common people, Avho evidently would have been 
gainers by the Reformation, were nevertheless its bitterest 
enemies. 
TT'f^ It is a remarkable fact, that, just at the time of the 
^Reformation, several nations of Europe were at the height 
of their power and prosperity. Thus it was with England 
under Elizabeth, the Netherlands under William and Mau- 
rice of Orange, Spain under Charles V. and Philip II., 
and Turkey under Soliman II. It was, therefore, a re- 
markable epoch of great developments in the political 
13* 



298 HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION. 

world ; and the Reformation is closely connected with the 
same, partly as exercising an influence over it, and partly 
as having been favorably or injuriously affected by it. As 
in the first ages of Christianity the Roman empire was at 
the height of its power, and yet was overcome by the 
spii'itual energy of our holy religion, so had the flourisliing 
kingdoms of Europe, at the Reformation, to experience 
that the spiritual force of truth is greater than military and 
political strength, and that the highest degree of earthly 
prosperity, of worldly honor and might, is insufficient to 
satisfy the vast desires of the human soul. And if the 
victory gained by the Reformation over Popery was not so 
signal and complete as was the primitive victory of Chris- 
tianity over heathenism, we must remember, that to the 
true Christian faith at the Reformation was opposed not 
merely heathen unbelief and heathen superstition, but a 
superstition which for centuries had been given out and 
received under the name of Christianity ; and that it was 
not mere error that now contended with Christian truth, 
but error which bore the appearance of Christian truth, and 
offered to men's minds at least a pretended satisfaction. 

(i.) Progress of Leiiers. 

Even out of the geographical limits of the Reformation, 
a great stir during this period was observable in all the 
provinces of human knowledge, and for the advancement 
of the arts and sciences. The study of classical literature 
was so supported and encouraged by the newly formed uni- 
versities, libraries, and high schools, that it increased more 
and more ; and the works of Reuchlin, (Capnio,) Erasmus, 
and others, tended to promote the Reformation. The 
various branches of philosophy, especially that of astrono- 
my,* as well as political science, poetry, painting, mathe- 
matics, history, and other departments of knowledge and 

* N. Copernicus died in 1543; 'lycho Brahe. in 1601; Galileo 
Galilei, in 1642. 



THE THIRTY YEARS* WAR. 299 

of the arts, were diligently cultivated. Painting and poetry 
in particular attained, through individuals named in the 
note below,* to such a height of improvement, that to this 
day it has never been surpassed. Many a production also 
of those times has, with all the advances that have since 
been made, never been surpassed; as, for instance, the 
Lutheran version of the Scriptures. But how far exer- 
tions in literature and science served as helps or impedi- 
ments to the kingdom of God, would be an inquiry too ex- 
tensive for our present limits. As long as the sciences 
are not employed in the service of God, or, at least, not in 
obedience to his word, and under its direction, though they 
cannot injure the truth itself, they can injure the persons 
who by such things allow themselves to be absorbed, or 
led away from the pure fountain of all wisdom and truth, 
and so become strangers to the only right rule for proving 
all things, and holding fast that which is good. Mean- 
while, whatever we obtain in the various paths of intellect- 
ual cultivation and taste, does often, of necessity, however 
foreign to our own intention, become subservient to the 
cause of God ; and the Christian man of science enjoys 
the sweet fruit of the stately tree of knowledge, while the 
enemies of divine truth only suck in death from its poison- 
ous rind. 

IL— THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. 

The unhappy strife of religious party feeling in Ger- 
many was at length cut short by war, which, like many 
other important events in the world's history, proceeded 
not from any deliberate human plan laid to produce it, but 

* Ariosto died in 1533; Tas.so, in 1595; Cervantes, oa the 23d of 
April, 161G, and Shakspeare on the same day: Camoeus in 1579; 
Hans Sachs, in 1576 ; Leonardo da Vinci, in 1519 ; Michael Angelo, 
in 1564; Raphael, in 1520; Titian, in 1576; Corregio, in 1534; 
Albei't Durer, in 1528 ; Luke Cranach, in 1533 ; and Hans Holbein, 
in 1554; Bacon, born 1561 ; Milton, born 1603. 



'300 THE THIRTY YEARS* WAR. 

was occasioned by an event quite unforeseen, and appa- 
rently accidental. 

The Utraquists, in Bohemia, who were so called because 
they received the Lord's supper {sub utraque) in both 
kinds, had, in 1609, by letters patent from the emperor 
Rudolph II., obtained permission for the free exercise of 
their rehgion, and the right to build new schools and 
churches. Two cases occurred in which their right was 
contested, and their complaint thereupon to the emperor 
Matthias met with no friendly reception. In conse- 
quence of this, several of the nobility, who were exaspe- 
rated at the emperor's severe answer, applied to the go- 
vernment at Prague, to bring to examination certain im- 
perial counselors in that city, whom they suspected of 
exercising hostile influence. As the persons who were 
thus questioned gave only harsh and unsatisfactory replies, 
they WQVQ, thrown out at the window, according to the rude 
usages of the Bohemians in those days, A. D. 1618. Such 
violent proceedings could not, of course, be allowed to pass 
unnoticed or unresented by the emperor ; but though the 
Bohemian nobility, to secure themselves from punishment, 
imprisoned thirty imperial magistrates, expelled the Jesu- 
its, and formed leagues with Protestants of other coun- 
tries, yet the emperor preferred pacific negotiations, which 
were continued to the time of his death, in 1619. 

The election of the new emperor, Fei*dinand II., duke 
of Steyermark, was not likely to put the Bohemians upon 
other measures, or upon a safer plan ; for he was, if pos- 
sible, more dangerous to them than his predecessor: he 
liad been educated by Jesuits, and was a bigoted adherent 
of Romanism, who had learned to consider it his sacred 
duty, and highly meritorious in the sight of God, to root 
out heretics. They, therefore, refused to acknowledge his 
succession to the throne of Bohemia, to which he had an 
hereditary claim : and they chose, instead of him, the elec- 
tor Frederic of the Palatinate, who wa.s at that time at the 



THE THIRTY YEARs' WAR. 801 

head of the Protestant Union m Germany. Because he 
was of the Reformed communion, the electorate of Saxony, 
in blind zeal for the Lutheran Church, had declined to 
join the Union, and now even went so far as to declare 
against him, and for the emperor. Here is a striking 
proof how dangerous to the position of the Protestants 
must have been tliis division and dispute between the Lu- 
therans and the Reformed. The Roman Catholic League, 
with the duke Maximilian of Bavaria at its head, sided, as 
did also Spain, with the new emperor. The Bohemian 
Count Von Thurn, who had already carried on secret ne- 
gotiations with the Hungarians, and with Bethlen Gabor, 
the prince of Transylvania, even marched before Vienna, 
and bombarded the imperial castle ; but the steadiness of 
Ferdinand compelled him to retreat, and, in a short time, 
the tide of success in war was quite turned against him. 
On the 8th of November, 1620, King Frederic was de- 
feated by Maximilian of Bavaria, in the battle of the White 
Mountain, near Prague, and fled with all precipitation to 
Holland. The Palatinate, with its electoral dignity, was now 
conferred on Maximilian. The emperor Ferdinand marched 
triumphantly into Prague, cut to pieces the letters patent 
with his own hands, expelled the Protestant clergy, reinstated 
the Jesuits, arrested a great many of the nobility, and dis- 
posed of some of them by the scaffold, and of others by 
banishment. About fifty thousand Protestant famiUes 
were compelled to emigrate, and they settled in Saxony, 
Prussia, and Brandenburg. 

The Protestant Union was now dissolved ; and only in- 
dividual princes, such as the count of Mansfeld, Christian, 
duke of Brunswick, and George Frederic, the margrave 
of Baden-Durlach, continued, upon their own account, the 
struggle with the Roman Catholic potentates. Mansfeld, a 
practiced and courageous freebooter, raised a considerable 
force, and, marching with lire and sword through several pro- 
vinces, especially through Alsace, was pursued by the Ba- 



302 THE THIRTf YEARS* WAR, 

varian general Tilly, but seldom overtaken, and never dis- 
pirited. Yet the decision of the cause was not granted by 
Providence through him, but the struggle only protracted ; 
and the result of his expeditions bore no proportion to the 
enormous sacrifices which they required. 

Equally unsuccessful was the margrave of Baden, who 
was defeated by Tilly, in the battle of Wimpfen, on the 
6th of May, 1622, and who, being disheartened by his de- 
feat, retired immediately into private life. In this battle 
four hundred citizens of Pforzheim fought with manly 
courage against Tilly, and every one of them was slain in 
the heat of the conflict. Likewise Duke Christian of 
Brunswick was twice defeated by Tilly, without having 
achieved anything of consequence to the Protestant cause. 
And now Christiern IV. of Denmark, in the capacity of 
chief of the circle of Lower Saxony, stood up to oppose 
the Romanists, and drew Count Mansfeld and the duke of 
Brunswick into his service. But he also was defeated by 
Tilly, at the battle of Lutter on the Barenberg, and was 
driven back into Denmark. Meanwhile General Wallen- 
stein, an expert warrior, whom the emperor had created 
duke of Friedland, and who himself had raised for him a 
large military force, was sent by him to relieve Tilly, the 
general of the league, imd to take the chief command. 
Count Mansfeld met him for battle near Dessau, but was 
defeated and fled, and pursued by Wallenstein into Tran- 
sylvania, to Bethlen Gabor. Here, for want of money, he 
was reduced to the necessity of disbanding his troops, and 
went to Venice, where death soon overtook him. Wallen- 
stein marched back into Germany, devastated Schleswick 
and Jutland, and permitted liis soldiers to make dreadful 
ravages. After this he drove out of their dominions the 
dukes of Mecklenburg, who had assisted the kmg of Den- 
mark, and got himself appointed by the emperor to that 
dukedom, and with it the dignity of electoral prince of the 



THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. '303 

empire. After besieging the city of Salstund without suc- 
cess, he suddenly, in 1629, concluded a peace with Den- 
mark, and tranquillity seemed to be restored to all Ger- 
many. 

But the emperor, being elated to insolence by his victo- 
rious position, knew no bounds of moderation ; and, at the 
instigation of the Jesuits, he issued what was called the 
Restitution Edict, which required the Protestants to restore 
all church property in their possession, and commanded 
all of the Lutheran persuasion to return under the do- 
minion of Romanism. The cause of the Protestants now 
appeared to be threatened with imminent ruin, for they 
were not united among themselves ; they had neither mo- 
ney nor troops, and Wallenstein stood with his powerful 
army in their neighborhood, ready at any moment to give 
them battle. God, however, sent them deliverance by 
Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, who had proved him- 
self a fit champion for the purpose, having commanded in 
the war with Poland. The French minister, Cardinal 
Richelieu, having, according to the old policy of his nation, 
in its endeavor to weaken the house of Hapsburg, effected 
a peace between Poland and Sweden, left Gustavus at 
liberty to aid the German Protestants, whose support he 
had very much at heart. He landed on tlie Pomeranian 
coast, with a small veteran army, on the 21st of June, 
1630, exactly a century after the presentation of the Augs- 
burg Confession, drove the imperial troops out of Pome- 
rania and Mecklenburg, reinstated the expelled dukes of 
Mecklenburg in their dominions, and pushed forward on 
his march to Saxony. But his negotiations with the elec- 
tor of Saxony, who long hesitated to join him. considerably 
retarded his advance, which he meant to ]m\e been very 
rapid ; and, meanwhile, Magdeburg was taken, plundered, 
and burnt, by General Tilly, on the 10th of May, 1631. 
But divine rebuke soon visited this unfeeling incendiary's 



304 THE THIRTY YeAKs' WAR. 

horrid treatment of the inhabitants of Magdeburg ; for, on 
the 7th of the following September, he was totally defeated 
by Gustavus, in the battle of Leipsic. 

Germany was now open on every side to the king of 
Sweden, from Avhom the emperor had hitherto entertained 
but little apprehension. Tilly had been defeated, and 
therefore entire confidence could no longer be placed in his 
generalship : and Wallenstein had been displaced, because 
from all quarters, and especially from the Roman Catholic 
princes themselves, loud complaints had been made of his 
haughtiness and arrogance toward them, of his cruelties 
and exactions toward their subjects, and of his disobedience 
to the emperor's orders. The Saxons pushed into Bohemia ; 
Gustavus turned his march toward the Rhine, and from 
thence to Bavaria, where he forced the passage of the 
Lech, on which occasion, Tilly, who had been victorious 
in thirty-six engagements, was killed by a shot from the 
Swedish miiitaryo Munich, Augsburg, and Landshut 
were forced to open their gates to the conqueror ; the 
road to Vienna was undefended before him, and the em- 
peror trembled in his castle. The only expedient left, was 
for him to entreat the oiFended Wallenstein to raise a new- 
army, and take the command of it. The latter consented, 
but upon severe conditions ; for what could be refused him 
in such circumstances ! Meanwhile, it was the pleasure 
of his vindictive spirit to leave still longer in anxiety the 
elector, Maximilian of Bavaria, avIio had been forward to 
urge his dismissal ; and, therefore, it Avas only by slow 
marches that he advanced toward the Swedish army. 
From his fortified camp, near Nuremberg, he looked 
down with proud security upon the brave Swedes, who 
attacked it by storm, and retreated with severe loss ; but, 
as soon as Gustavus had marched away from the place, 
Wallenstein hastened with his force toward Saxony, to 
chastise that impoverished country for the revolt of its 
prince. Gustavus, being called by the elector to his help, 



THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. 305 

advanced by forced marches, and found his powerful foe 
near Liitzen, in the vicinity of Leipsic. On the 16th of 
November, 1632, a general engagement ensued; in the 
very heat of which the king was struck by a ball, and 
died on the field of battle. But his Swedes, as soon as 
apprised of this event, were only the more fired with re- 
sentment, and fought on with irresistible bravery, so that 
they stood their ground against the greatly superior num- 
bers of Wallenstein, and remained masters of the field. 

If no one can be called great who is not superior to 
selfishness, nor able to subdue his passions as well as his 
enemies, then "Wallenstein was far from great ; for he suf- 
fered the passions of avarice, pride, and revenge, to rule 
over him with violence ; whereas, Gustavus Adolphus may 
well deserve the appellation of Great, for he was an open- 
heai'ted, upright, magnanimous, and heroic commander; 
who forgave offenses, and never availed himself of the most 
inviting opportunities of revenge, as may be seen in his 
conduct with respect to Bavaria and Saxony. But the 
difference between these two remarkable persons was 
of a still deeper description. Wallenstein had no faith 
in God beyond mere superstition ; and the only God he 
sincerely worshiped was self. Gustavus Adolphus, on the 
contrary, was a sincerely pious man, who trusted in the 
living God ; therefore, he allowed no soldier in his army 
to live disorderly, nor to practice any ill conduct or cruelty 
in a conquered country. Public worship, and singing of 
pious hymns, distinguished his troops above all others; 
and no battle was begun by them without prayer. Every 
sincere Protestant in Germany gratefully cherishes his 
memory ; for though he defended the cause of German 
Protestantism during little more than two years, yet he, in 
that short time, gave quite a new turn to its affairs, and 
laid the foundation for the restoration of religious liberty, 
by the sacrifice of his ease, his kingdom, and his life. 

Wallenstein, instead of renewing his attack upon the 



306 THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. 

Swedish army, after they had lost theu* leader, retreated 
quietly toward Bohemia, and attempted a negotiation with 
the Swedes and Saxons, who, however, felt no more con- 
fidence in him, than the emperor himself. The latter ap- 
prehended that he would declare his independence, and 
take the crown of Bohemia ; and as he thought so danger- 
ous a man was not to be approached with open force, he got 
rid of him by procuring his assassination, at Eger, in 1634, 
and gave to his own son, the archduke Ferdinand, the 
command of the army. 

The Swedes, after their great king's death, were com- 
manded by Bernard, the brave duke of Saxe-Weimai* ; 
while the home administration of their country was con- 
ducted by the wise chancelor, Oxenstiern. But the same 
unhappy cause that had wrested victory from the Protest- 
ant princes when they encountered Charles V., near Ingol- 
stadt, the want of union among themselves, proved alike 
detrimental to the Swedish army, when, on the 7th of 
September, 1634, they faced the imperialists nearNordhn- 
gen. The excellent general Horn wished to refrain from 
engaging the enemy ; but the fiery duke Bernard outvoted 
him. The Swedes were defeated, and Horn himself was 
taken prisoner. Saxony now fell away from the Swedes, 
and concluded a separate peace with the emperor; but 
Oxenstiern sought help from the French government, 
whose self-interested policy easily induced them to grant 
it, for they hoped they should now have an opportunity of 
uniting Alsace to France. 

The German princes, since the peace of Saxony, had 
gradually, one after the other, come over to the emperor, 
and had deserted the Swedes. But the Swedes were 
again successful in a bloody victory gained near Wittstock, 
on the 24th of September, 1636, over the Saxons and Aus- 
trians, under the command of General Banner. In 1638, 
Duke Bernard defeated the Austrians near Rheinfelde, 
and then turned his march for the conquest of Alsace. 



THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. 307 

which had been promised him in a treaty with France. 
But as he could not consent to deliver up to the French the 
fortress of Breisach, that key of Germany, which, in 1639, 
he had taken, after a long siege, his death was brought 
about in a sudden manner, probably by poison, at the in- 
stance of the French minister, Richelieu. The emperor, 
Ferdinand II., had died about two years previously, his 
sixteen years' reign having been without a single interval 
of peace ; and his son, Ferdinand III., was elected emperor, 
whose disposition was more mild ; so that his government 
was more inclined to pacific measures. General Banner, 
who conducted the Swedes after Duke Bernard's death, 
was one of the most valuable men of the military followers 
of Gustavus Adolphus; but he also died, in 1641, and left 
the command to General Torstensohn, a paralytic man, who 
had to be carried about in a chair, but who united with 
quick and keen sightedness, courageous decision and rapid 
execution. The infirm general flew, as on eagles' wings, 
at the head of his army, from one end of Germany to an- 
other, seized Glogau and Schweidnitz, and pushed forward 
with precipitation into Moravia. The imperial territories 
had hitherto been spared the vexations of war ; and the 
Swedish soldiers, who had marched into the heart of Ger- 
many, through provinces quite impoverished and exhausted, 
had long eagerly desired to visit for once the rich and 
flourishing regions of Austria, and to refresh themselves 
there from their fatigues and hardships. People had 
already begun to tremble in Vienna itself; but the empe- 
ror's general, Piccolomini, drove the Swedes back to Saxony. 
Torstensohn there turned about, and faced the imperialists, 
upon the same field of battle which had become renowned 
by the victory that Gustavus Adolphus gained over Tilly ; 
and there, on the 2d of November, 1 642, he, in like man- 
ner, gained a complete victory. In the following year he 
again poured his troops into Bohemia and Moravia, and 
sent his cavalry forward to the very gates of Vienna. 



308 THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. 

In the year 1644 he defeated the imperial general, Gallas ; 
and, in 1645, the generals, Hatzfeld and Goetz: so that 
now there was no imperial army in readiness to protect 
Vienna, upon which Torstensohn menaced an attack. 
Sickness, which had diminished the Swedish army by one 
half, and Torstensohn's own bad state of health, proved the 
saving of the emperor, by obliging Torstensohn to retreat 
into Bohemia, and to resign the command to General 
Wrangel. Saxony, which had been dreadfully desolated 
by friend and foe, and had dearly paid for the inconstancy 
of its electoral prince, was at length compelled, in 1 645, to 
conclude an armistice, and to remain neutral in future. 
The elector of Bavaria was compelled to do the same, in 
1647, in consequence of the ravages which the French 
and Swedes had made in his dominions ; and when he 
infringed the articles of neutrality, these desolations were 
renewed by Turenne and Wrangel. At the same time, 
25th July, 1648, the Swedish general Konigsmark had 
made liimself master of part of the city of Prague, and 
was just about to storm the citadel, when dispatches arrived 
informing him that peace was concluded. 

For twelve years past conditions of peace had been 
agitated ; for all the belligerent powers had become quite 
weary of this devastating war, which had crippled agricul- 
ture and commerce, drained every country of its produce, 
and destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives ; and they 
longed for tranquillity and repose, in order to be healed 
of the wounds with which the nations were bleeding. But 
neither party would be the first to sheath the sword ; be- 
cause each was resolved to gain advantages by the peace, 
or at least to obtain indemnification for the many losses it 
had sustained ; and desired, by the one or the other alter- 
native, to come off with advantage as much as possible, at 
the termination of hostilities, in order to be enabled to 
assert still further claims. At length, however, they suc- 
ceeded in adjusting interests so very different and opposite ; 



THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. 309 

and the peace, which has generally been called the peace 
of Westphalia, was concluded with the Swedes at Osna- 
briick, and with the French at Miinster. By this treaty, 
so important in the affairs of the German empire, and in 
the history of the Reformation, France obtained Sundgau 
and the greater part of Alsace ; Sweden, live millions of 
dollars, (nearly seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds 
sterling,) together with the island of Riigen, the citadel of 
Stettin, Hither Pomerania, Wismar, Bremen, and Yerden, 
and a sitting and vote in the Germanic diet. The Pala- 
tinate of the Rhine was restored to the son of the elector, 
Frederic ; and other princes were indemnified in other 
ways. The United Netherlands and Switzerland were 
acknowledged as free and independent states ; civil and poli- 
tical equality, and the unrestricted exercise of their religion, 
were accorded to all the various parties ; and possession of 
the appropriated ecclesiastical lands and establishments 
was to continue as it had been in the year 1624. 

Other countries of Germany, whose princes had been 
driven out from them by the war, as Wiirtemberg, Baden, 
Nassau, &c., were given back to their rightful governors. 
Sovereignty was secured to the German princes and 
estates in their respective territories, together with the 
right of contracting with foreign powers, as long as it did 
not militate against the empire and its ruler. The more, 
in this way, the influence of the emperor vras lessened, 
which was also further limited by the diet, the more did 
the immediate estates of the empire gain thereby, and the 
more was at the same time lost by those cities which had 
hitherto possessed such great immunities ; and, of all the 
Ilanseatic towns, only Hamburg, Bremen, and Liibeck re- 
mained confederate with one another, and in possession of 
their independence. The bond, that in earlier times had 
kept together the imperial sovereign and his empire, had 
been all along gradually relaxing, and the partition of the 
several German countries from one another had been in 



310 THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. 

proportion becoming more and more distinct and decided. 
Much as all this tended to weaken the power of Germany 
in reference to foreign nations, and to undermine its politi- 
cal importance, it was, on the other hand, beneficial as to 
the development of science, and all the advantages of civil 
society, through the mutual emulation for which it made 
way between these different countries; it helped also to 
insure a balance of power, and a protection to the church 
of Christ. What we have said already upon the several 
states of Europe itself, as to the advantages of their sepa- 
ration from under one general head, is equally applicable 
to this partition of the German empire. 

About two-thirds of the German empire had, during the 
thirty years' war, perished by the sword, or by sickness, 
or famine, or outrage. Most of the cities and towns were 
demolished or impoverished ; arable land was everywhere 
covered with w^eeds ; many villages had become totally 
depopulated, and others so utterly annihilated that their 
place could no more be found. Thus, in Wiirtemberg, the 
population, which had amounted to three hundred and forty 
thousand at the beginning of the war, had sunk down to 
forty-eight thousand : and vineyards to the amount of forty 
thousand acres, corn lands and vegetable gardens to the 
amount of two hundred and forty-eight thousand acres, and 
pasture land to the amount of twenty -four thousand acres?, 
remained utterly neglected ; eight towns were destroyed ; 
thirty-six thousand houses burnt to the ground ; and, in 
twenty-two years, landed property had suffered a loss to 
the amount of one hundred and eighteen millions of florins, 
or ten millions one hundred and sixty-three thousand eight 
hundred and eighty-seven pounds sterling. 

Although this war immediately concerned only Ger- 
many, yet nearly all countries at the same period were 
undergoing great commotions, while new kingdoms were 
forming, or new dynasties coming to their thrones. Eng- 
land, however, as was before remarked, though the throne 



RELIGIOUS STATE OF GERMANY. 311 

had passed from the Tudors to the Stuarts, had, during 
a part of the time, been peacefully making progress m 
literature, the arts, naval achievements, commerce, and in 
wealth;. and was thus preparing the way for her future 
greatness. In 1589 the house of Bourbon became in- 
vested with the sovereignty of France ; that of Braganza 
first possessed the throne of Portugal in 1640; that of 
Romanov first held the empire of Russia in 1613 ; and the 
family of Steyermark, the crown of Bohemia in 1618. 
Likewise, in the East, about this time, great changes took 
place ; the Mandshu Tartars obtained the empire of China 
in 1610 ; and in Persia arose the powerful dynasty of the 
Abbassides, who made extensive conquests. Also in Abys- 
sinia, Tunis, and Morocco, similar changes occurred. If 
by faith we '• see that which is invisible," and consider the 
wickedness of man's heart, we shall probably- find it easier 
to account for commotions of one and the same description 
in human history, arising in countries and circumstances 
so different and remote from each other. 

in.— RELIGIOUS STATE OF GERMANY AT THIS 
PERIOD. 

The opposition made to blind Papal superstition in the 
way of head knowledge, that is, by intelligent argumenta- 
tion from the truths of Scri^^ture, had soon become more 
popular in the Protestant Church, than that equally intelli- 
gent, and still more important opposition, which vital faith 
makes against Papal errors. Instead of drawing every 
answer from the rich treasures of the word of God ; and 
instead of making these treasures their own in life and 
conversation ; the Protestant clergy were far more occu- 
pied in defining, distinguishing, and systematizing the 
various points of church doctrine ; and spent their diligence 
much more in the refutation of errors, than in the positive 
recognition of divine truth, or in holding forth the word of 



312 RELIGIOUS STATE OF GERMANY. 

life. The Lutheran divines did not rest merely in endea- 
vors to prove the Scriptural correctness of their confession 
of faith, in opposition to the Papists and Reformed, but, 
even in the bosom of their own churches, there arose about 
their common confession a considerable variety of conflict- 
ing opinions, to which too great importance was attached, 
and in the discussion and maintenance of whicli too much 
time and toil were spent, especially as these controversies 
could seldom be conducted with the calmness, moderation, 
and love of peace which such things always require. AYhile 
the controversies among the Reformed ran chiefly upon 
the doctrines of election and free-will, the Lutherans con- 
troverted various errors warmly with one another, and 
especially such views as seemed to imply that man, by 
good works, can contribute anything to his own salvation. 
There was formed by degrees a cold, lifeless orthodoxy, 
which consisted in mere notions, and which came very far 
short of vital Christianit}'. 

The Protestant Church, about the time when the thirty 
years' war broke out, very much needed a revival ; and 
God, as if to show that his kingdom cannot be destroyed 
by war, did in that very season raise up such worthies as 
the church stood in need of; men, who insisted more upon 
living in the Spirit of Christ, with heartfelt piety and 
genuine conversion to God, than upon accurate definitions 
of Scriptural subjects ; and who, amidst the pressures and 
difliculties arising from the state of the times, and the un- 
numbered troubles of war, were enabled to render the 
desired consolations of the word of God accessible to the 
broken spirits of the oppressed. Such were John Arndt, 
John Gerard, Stephen Pretorius, Henry Miiller, Christian 
Scriver, John Valentine Andreas, and others. 

How needful such men's labors were, to oppose the dead, 
ideal theology of the times, may be gathered from the fact, 
that the writings of Arndt, whose " True Christianity " has, 
by the divine blessing, been made useful to thousands of 



AT THIS PERIOD. 313 

souls, were declared by the orthodox, Luke Osiander, to 
be pestilential, Papistical, and evil ; and that Arndt, on 
account of them, was even charged by him with blas- 
pheming against the Holy Ghost. Philip James Spener, 
in the latter half of the seventeenth century, followed up 
the train of those excellent men, and testified in the same 
spirit against the dry scholastic kind of theology which had 
so long prevailed ; and as he had no prospect of being 
able to compass the whole church, by reason of its internal 
differences and divisions, he invited all real Christians to 
unite in more practically acknowledged communion with 
one another, and to aim at mutual edification, in the sim- 
plicity of devout reflection upon the word of God. The 
chief business of the Reformation at its commencement 
was separation from Popery, the rectifying of abuses and 
erroneous doctrines, the free possession of the word of 
God, and the diligent preaching and reading of the same. 
Upon all these things men could become enlightened and 
convinced, without being really converted to God; and 
hence the Protestant Church exhibited Utile more than a 
new medley of persons of various opinions, who were kept 
together by one and the same general Scriptural profession 
of faith. The general character of the Protestant Church 
did not amount to the character of a communion of true 
believers in Jesus, and the spirit of it could just as easily 
remain cold and dead, with an evangelical confession of 
faith, as with a Popish one. And yet Spener's aim was, 
of course, not to obtain such a communion of saints as 
should have no tares at all mixed with it, the Lord himself 
having already, in Matt, xiii, 24—30, assured him that this, 
under the present dispensation, is out of the question ; but 
only a communion of Christians, whose consciences should 
have become awakened to that certain verity, that nothing 
but heartfelt conversion and our being born again can fit 
us for the kingdom of God ; that no public confession of 
faith, be it ever so Scriptural and orthodox, can suffice for 
U 



314 BRITAIN, AND THE NETHERLANDS. 

such a purpose. This distinction, which was the one upon 
which Spener insisted, together with the effect it was instru- 
mental in producing, must not, in any attempt to contem- 
plate this world's history on Scriptural principles, be over- 
looked or disregarded; inasmuch as the great religious 
revivals, so remarkable at the beginning of the eighteenth 
and nineteenth centuries, and which have been even at- 
tended with considerable influence on the political world, 
are intimately connected with this vital distinction in 
spiritual matters. 

IV.— BRITAIN, AND THE NETHERLANDS. 

While the thirty years' war was raging in Germany, 
England also was visited with troubles of another sort, 
which indeed bore, in like manner, an ecclesiastical charac- 
ter, though political interest was their mainspring, as was 
religious profession that of the German commotions. From 
the year 1625 the sovereignty of Great Britain was in the 
hands of Charles I., a rash man, of arbitrary character, not 
deficient in many good qualities, but greatly so in discre- 
tion and right decision. By keeping his parliament dis- 
solved for eleven years together, and by his endeavor to 
impose uniformity in religion upon all his subjects, agree- 
ably to some innovations of his own, he provoked a very 
general indignation against himself, and thus occasioned, 
especially by the cause last mentioned, no inconsiderable 
emigrations of the English Puritans to North America, 
where they founded the first British American colonies. 
The Scots, who were determined to oppose his arbitrary 
proceedings, entered into a solemn league and covenant 
with one another, for the protection and defense of their 
religious liberty. Charles hereupon invaded them with his 
troops, which they defeated and repulsed from their borders. 
The English obliged him, in 1 640, to call a new parliament, 
which sat for eight years without molestation, and heuce 



BRITAIN, AND THE NETHERLANDS. 315 

was called the Long Parliament. The parliamentary mea- 
sures that were carried, one after another, and which, 
collectively aimed at humbling the sovereign, he found it 
no longer in his power to prevent or defeat. The issue 
of this was a civil war, that continued for four years ; and 
in which the party that favored Romanism, together with 
the prelates and most of the nobility, was opposed to the 
commons and the Puritans. This war raised to distinction 
the parliamentary general, Oliver Cromwell, a man of re- 
spectable parentage, but who had spent his time at the 
university rather in the levities of idle students than in 
literary occupations. He joined himself to the most zea- 
lous of the Puritans, and soon went to an enthusiastical 
extreme in his adoption of their views. Not only did he 
signalize himself in arms, but also, by his religious repre- 
sentations, he gathered to himself a party having civil and 
religious equality for their main object, rejectmg all the 
gradations of rank and dignity in the church, exemplified 
in episcopac}-. or even in Presbyterianism. The king's 
party became weaker and weaker; and the unhappy 
monarch found himself, at length, so deserted, that he 
threw himself into the arms of the Scots, who, however, de- 
livered him up to the English parliament. Cromwell, whose 
spirit felt the stirrings of ambition, began to meditate 
getting rid of the king ; and for this end he drove out, by 
his military, from the Long Parliament, all whom he con- 
sidered obnoxious members, and left in it only the shadow 
of its former authority. And now he could easily effect 
that the king should be brought to trial, and be condemned 
to death, without a dissentient voice. The sentence of 
death w^as accordingly passed, and was executed on the 
.30th of January, 1649. Few will now be found who at- 
tempt to excuse or defend this act. An attempt, that was 
begun in Scotland, to place the king's son upon the throne, 
met with such unfavorable reception, that by two battles, 
in which Cromwell was victorious, it was totally defeated. 



316 BRITAIN, AND THE NETHERLANDS. 

Cromwell having, in 1653, expelled the Long Parliament, 
soon ruled all England with unlimited regal power, though 
he chose to bear merely the title of Protector. 

The United Netherlands had, meanwhile, brought their 
maritime commerce to a very flourishing state ; they had 
crippled the commercial interests of Spain and Portugal ; 
they had formed trading companies for the East and West 
Indies; they had planted many colonies, (as that of the 
Cape of Good Hope in 1653,) and had defended them by 
renowned admirals, such as Van Tromp and De Ruyter. 
But Cromwell put an end to all this glory, by the naval 
expeditions which he sent out in his war with the Dutch, 
and thus England became a maritime power of the first 
rank. He took Jamaica and Dunkirk from the Spaniards, 
and set on foot many wise regulations for the political m- 
terests of his country. Nevertheless, he had but little 
personal enjoyment of the power that had come into his 
possession. The evident uneasiness of his conscience, his 
sense of blood-guiltiness, and especially of the unjust con- 
demnation of his sovereign, appear to have disturbed him, 
so that he found no peace of mind. The dread of an 
avenging hand by assassination continually haunted him, 
and the terrors of God imbittered his retired moments. 
He died a natural death, in the year 1658 ; and was suc- 
ceeded in the protectorate by his son Richard ; who, having 
found a reign of one year to be more than enough for his 
political incapacity, willingly slirunk into private life and 
retirement: and the Scottish general, Monk, now placed 
Charles H., the son of the murdered king, upon the 
throne. 



THE NEW POLITICAL SYSTEM. 817 



v.— THE NEW POLITICAL SYSTEM, AND 
LOUIS XIV. OF FRANCE. 

The nearer the stream of history descends to our own 
times, the more does it part off into numerous ramifications ; 
and this renders it the less easy to command even a per- 
spective view of the whole. Or, comparing it to a tree, 
we may add, that as long as its few original branches are 
seen as yet not far raised above the main stem, or running 
up with it, as it were, in parallel lines, the historian's work 
is not difficult ; but when we are obliged to look beyond 
the stem, to where the eye commands only a complication 
and confusion of branch and foliage, we have then to notice 
the form and relative proportions of every principal part. 
Human history, at its earliest periods, shows chiefly the 
origin and broad outlines of the successive great empires ; 
and thus the description we have to make is more simple. 
And even in the middle ages, the European powers, as 
being but a continuation of the Roman, serve as a natural 
centre. In England, Denmark, and Norway, and in 
Sweden, Poland, Russia, Hungary, and Bohemia, in Italy, 
in Naples and Sicily, in the popedom, in France, Spain, 
Constantinople, and Jerusalem, we behold, sooner or later, 
more or less, the reins of government in the hands of Ger- 
manic princes. But, by the thirty years' war, the German 
empire lost much of its lustre ; the power of Germany 
abroad was broken; the kingdoms became severed from 
one another by a new line of policy. The crooked arti- 
fices of this new policy, which originated chiefly in France* 
are perceptible in single instances at an earlier period ; but 
it was not till now that they were regularly adopted as 
leading principles of government. Germany, that had not 
sufficiently seen through these subtilties of the French 
policy, still less was able, her interests being too much di- 
vided, successfully to act against such cabinet intrigue. 



818 THE NEW POLITICAL SYSTEM, 

France and Sweden had become the dictating and dis- 
posing powers that set the other nations to work, and 
formed the nucleus of history. This cabinet policy had 
so much the more free play, since the private subject 
could no longer, as in the middle ages, take a personal part 
in the decision of public matters. His right of suffrage 
was now limited by his prince, and wars were henceforth 
prosecuted by means of standing armies. Other interests, 
partly of an humbler and partly of a loftier kind than those 
of nationality, or of participation in the government of their 
country, now began to occupy men's minds. Some had 
sought and found their indemnification in religion ; others 
learned to forget state affairs in the cultivation of rising 
and enriched sciences and arts ; others were wholly en- 
gaged in the acquisition of wealth ; and the bulk of the 
people had enough to do to earn their bread by their daily 
toil. As one proof of the unconcern of the common people 
about matters of government, we may instance the first 
publication of newspapers, about the year 1563,* as these 
at that time furnished active statesmen with a means of 
concealing their own designs; while, on the other hand, 
the increase of post-officest is an evidence of the increasing 
complexity of political, as well as of civil relations. 

The new policy was organized originally by Cardinal 
Bichelieu, the prime minister of France, who was at the 
helm of the government during the minority and childish 
manhood of Louis XIII., from 1610 to 1643. The secret 
mainspring of that government was selfishness ; mere self- 
interest. It was quite a stranger to moral principles, the 
principles of common equity and humanity. One and the 
same line of proceeding could be pursued or abandoned by 
it at pleasure, as the question was not how equitable, but 
how advantageous, any purpose might be. Success was 

* The first German newspaper was published in the year 1615. 
t These were first introduced into Germany by Counts Von 
Thurn and Taxis, at the beginning of the sixteenth century. 



AND LOUIS XIV. OF FRANCE. 319 

regarded as a proof of political wisdom, and such wisdom 
passed for honesty and law ! Richelieu did not rest till he 
had extorted from the French Protestants their last place 
of refuge, Rochelle; and yet, immediately after this, he 
rendered powerful assistance to the Protestants of Ger- 
many ; not because of any alteration of his own opinions, 
but because it was French policy to seize every opportu- 
nity of working detriment and humiliation to the house of 
Hapsburg. His great object was to raise the power of the 
state to its highest degree, partly by acquisitions abroad, 
and partly by lowering and contracting the rights and 
privileges which were possessed by powerful individual 
subjects at home. The ascendency of government was to 
become continually greater ; that is, more extensive and 
absolute. Formerly the notion of the people had been, 
that they needed a prince to conduct them in war, and 
decide causes for them in peace ; in a word, to be the 
conservator of public order and safety. But now the 
notion had begun to prevail that the people were one of 
the requisites of the prince, for his enjoyment of sovereign 
power ; that territory was another, for supplying his reve- 
nues ; and an army another, for the accomplishment of his 
will; and the next king, Louis XIV., made no secret of 
this notion, when he said, " I am the state." The only 
right and Scriptural principle, that rulers are " God's 
ministers," and that " the powers that be " are " ordained of 
God," as his instruments for diffusing his blessings among 
the nations, or for promulgating his displeasure against the 
sins of men, was thus more and more forgotten both by 
princes and people. 

Upon the death of Richelieu, in 1644, his political 
principles continued to be acted upon by Cardinal Mazarin, 
who managed the affairs of the government during the 
minority of Louis XIV., but who, by his reckless oppression 
of the people, provoked such opposition as broke out at 
length into a civil war. After Mazarin's death, in 1661, 



S20 THE NEW POLITICAL SYSTEM, 

Louis had in everything more decidedly his own way ; he 
soon, however, showed that he was a most tractable scholar 
of the new political system. He felt a passion for universal 
empire ; and though he never could attain his object, his 
long reign of seventy-two years was one of perpetual war 
for the purpose. He was a man not gifted with any one 
remarkable endowment; pride, ambition, selfishness, and 
cunning, were his most conspicuous qualities ; but he had the 
good fortune to have distinguished statesmen and generals, 
who achieved great things in his name, and were prudent 
enough to permit the whole credit to redound to himself 
Colbert, his minister of the interior, by his encouragement 
of trade, industry, planning and cutting of canals, estab- 
lishment of colonies in Western Africa and in the West 
Indies, as also by his introduction of new manufactures, 
and his advancement of the maritime power of France, 
put great life into commerce, while he likewise patronized 
and much furthered the interests of agriculture, and did his 
utmost to alleviate the burdens of taxation. But while 
Colbert's administration was thus tending to promote the 
prosperity of France, that prosperity was proportionably 
countervailed and undermined by its incessant and aggressive 
wars ; for though Louis was, for the most part, successful 
in them, and hereby increased his territory, yet were they 
prosecuted with so many acts of glaring injustice, that no 
real benefit, nothing that bore the semblance of a divine 
blessing, could result from them ; so that when this king 
died he left a burden of debt to the amount of one thousand 
millions of florins, or about two hundred and fifty millions 
of dollars. 

His generals, Catinat, Turenne, Conde, Vauban, and 
the Marshal of Luxembourg, greatly signalized themselves 
in the wars which Louis waged from ambition of conquest. 
In the first Spanish war, A. D. 1667, Louis desired to 
seize the Spanish Netherlands, and had made considerable 
progress in his enterprise, when an alliance, between Eng- 



AND LOUIS XIV. OF FRANCE. 321 

land, Holland, and Sweden, obliged him to conclude a peace, 
at Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1668. Four years afterward, he 
attempted to revenge himself upon the Dutch, and fell 
upon them with a powerful army. But Holland having 
declared William of Orange their hereditary stadtholder, 
this undaunted and wise champion of their cause, by an 
alliance with the emperor Leopold I. and Spain, and 
with the aid of Admiral De Ruyter's naval victories, 
reduced the French king to the necessity of concluding the 
peace of Nymwegen, A. D. 1678. Louis, however, could 
not long be contented to remain quiet; but, in 1681, lie 
took Strasburg and other German districts by surprise, 
under the pretext that formerly they had belonged to Alsace, 
which had been ceded to France by the peace of West- 
phalia. In the year 1688 he seized the Palatinate, its 
inheritance having lapsed by the demise of the electoral 
prince, Charles, and to which he thought he could maintain 
the claim. The Palatinate and the upper provinces of the 
Rhine were then most cruelly devastated by the French : 
Heidelberg, Mannheim, Spires, Worms, and a number of 
other cities, were burned to the ground ; and depopulation 
and plunder, such as had been carried on by the Huns in 
the time of Attila, converted the beautiful vale of the 
Rhine into a dreary wilderness. The German emperor 
formed an alliance with England, Holland, Spain, and 
Savoy, against the French ; and though the latter gained 
the battle of Fleurus in 1690, and that of Neerwinden in 
1693, yet their fleet w^as destroyed by the Enghsh in 1692. 
At length was concluded the peace of Byswick, in 1697, 
by which Louis was obliged to give back the provinces he 
had so iniquitously seized, on the left bank of the Rhine. 

A new struggle commenced in 1701, in consequence of 
the death of Charles II. of Spain, who died without issue, 
and whose kingdom was claimed both by Louis and by 
the emperor Leopold I. Louis had still some valuable 
generals, as Villars and Vendome ; but they were no match 
14* 



322 THE NEW POLITICAL SYSTEM, 

against such distinguished commtinders among the allies 
as were Prince Eugene of Savoy, Louis the margrave of 
Baden, and England's captain, the duke of Marlborough. 
Li the battles of Hochstadt or Blenheim, Ramillies, 
Turin, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet, the French were 
beaten : and Louis would have found it necessary to sub- 
mit to the hardest terms, had not the death of the emperor 
Joseph and the recall of Marlborough intervened for his 
relief. By the peace of Utrecht in 1713, and that of 
Rastatt in 1714, he still gained very favorable conditions: 
Philip of Anjou obtained the crown of Spain with its colo- 
nies ; to Austria, Belgium, Milan, Naples, and Sardinia 
were assigned ; and the English were allowed to hold 
Gibraltar and some important West India Islands. 

Louis patronized the arts and sciences ; chiefly, perhaps, 
because in so doing he gratified his vanity, and advanced 
his fame. France, during his reign, was furnished with 
eminent writers, as Bossuet, Racine, Corneille, Moliere, 
Boileau, Montesquieu, Lafontaine ; and with accomplished 
artists, as Le Brun, Poussin, and Claude Lorraine. And 
though there were not wanting noble-spirited and pious 
men, as Pascal and Fenelon ; yet, at the same time, 
France gave birth to Rousseau and Voltaire, by whose 
writings chiefly it was that the spirit of infidelity and 
apostasy from Christ became diflfused throughout Europe, 
and by which the minds of so many still remain seduced 
and debased. Paris was considered, in the reign of Louis 
XIV., as not only the centre of politics, but also the 
metropolis of education and politeness in the western 
world. Its language, which in correspondence and general 
use had superseded the Latin, became the common lan- 
guage of European courts, and of the upper classes in 
neighboring nations ; its refined education set the tone 
everywhere ; its manners and fashions gained the ascend- 
ency, and were everywhere imitated. As Athens, in the 



AND LOUIS XIV. OF FRANCE. 323 

flourishing period of Greece, was referred to upon all 
matters of taste, so was Paris in the eighteenth century. 
But, together with this, became diffused the spirit of 
French levity, libertinism, indifference to and derision of 
holy things ; so that even then were sown abundantly the 
seeds of that revolutionary mischief, which, in a few years, 
leavened not only France, but more or less every country 
of Europe. The two principal means of its furtherance 
were absolute monarchy strained to tyranny, and a general 
recklessness about morality and religion, those pillars of 
national i)rosperity, and of all good government. 

Splendid as at times was the reign of Lewis XIV., it 
ended in having drained France of its essential and vital 
strength. The profligacy of the royal household and of 
the court, the monarch's own senseless extravagance, the 
standing armies, and the numerous wars, had introduced 
oppressive taxation ; and, after the death of the minister 
Colbert, the common people became so burdened with ex- 
orbitant imposts that they often had scarcely bread to eat, 
at the very time when the grossest luxury prevailed at 
court, and while the nobility Avere excused from the pay- 
ment of taxes. The whole country, which, besides its 
natural fertility, the ever-active Colbert had brought to a 
high degree of culture and prosperity, had become, at the 
time of Lewis's death, quite impoverished and exhausted, 
Lewis XIY., after the reign of seventy-two years, includ- 
ing his minority, sunk into his grave amid the indignant 
curses of his subjects. But the evil did not die with him. 
The systematic and flagrant injustice which marked his 
whole despotic reign, the unfeeling levity with which his 
minister Louvois could advise and determine upon a war, 
and cause unoffending countries to be devastated with 
Vandal barbarity, for the diversion of his master, could 
never exalt a nation, nor bring upon it the blessing of 
Heaven. The perfidy and inhuman cruelties with which 



324 THE NEW POLITICAL SYSTEM, 

Louis drove his Protestant subjects to death, or to per- 
petual banishment from their native land, could only entail 
a curse. 

And here let it be observed, that violent persecutions, 
on account of religion, have not been practiced only by 
ignorant pagans ; even the highest culture and most pol- 
ished manners are no preservatives against committing the 
most coarse and cruel abominations of fanatical bigotry ; 
because the spirit of the world, under every form, is equally 
averse to the dominion of Christ and his rehgion. That 
Louis XIV. consented, as he did, in 1685, to revoke the 
edict of Nantes, which had been granted by Henry IV., 
and which guarantied to the Protestants the free exercise 
of their religion, is an everlasting reproach to a prince 
whose reign is boasted to have been a new era of light. 
It was, in a man who was by some considered to have in- 
troduced to the world a new generation of illuminati, either 
a sign of his enmity against the truth, if the cruelty origi- 
nated with himself, or a proof of his weakness and want 
of character, if he suffered himself to be persuaded to it 
by Louvois, Maintenon, and the Jesuits. It is evident 
that the latter had very great influence over him ; and it 
is even asserted that, shortly before his death, he secretly 
became a member of their order, thinking thereby to alle- 
viate his wretched state of mind, as his conscience tor- 
mented him about the impieties and abominations of his 
past life. The revocation of the edict of Nantes intro- 
duced the attempt to dragoon the French Protestants back 
to Romanism; and the horrible oppressions, injuries, and 
tortures that were practiced upon them, brought back to 
France the period of the Albigenses. They v/ere forbid- 
den to emigrate ; nevertheless, more than fifty thousand 
families, leaving their property behind them, fled into 
Germany, and found a hospitable refuge in various Pro- 
testant countries, especially in Brandenburg ; and recom- 
pensed the kind reception they met with by the great com-* 



AND LOUIS XIV. OF FRANCE. 325 

mercial activity and new branches of employment which 
they introduced. Many also took refuge in England and 
in Holland. 

During the reign of Louis XIV. there arose no small 
stir among the French Romanists themselves, through the 
controversies between the Jesuits and the Jansenists. The 
latter were greatly attached to the writings of Augustine, 
respecting the doctrine of original sin, free grace, and per- 
sonal election ; whereas the Jesuits, who defended the pe- 
culiar tenets of Romanism, departed upon those points as 
much from the Scriptures as from Augustine himself. 
The Jansenists, in opposition to the Jesuits, insisted much 
upon the maintenance of rigid moral principles, as also 
upon the circulation of the Scriptures, and the education 
of the people ; they refused to acknowledge the pope's in- 
fallibility, and yet were equally far from approving of 
Protestantism. The pope, however, condemned them, and 
Louis XIV. persecuted them, so that they were constrained 
to take refuge in the Netherlands, where they founded an 
independent church. Also, the controversies with the 
Quietists, who made the essence of religion to consist rather 
in inward feelings and elevation of the soul to God, than 
in outward profession and activity agreeable to it in com- 
mon life, took place at this period ; for Fenelon had joined 
the Quietists. These persons may be considered as ex- 
emplifying mysticism in practice, its theory having been 
set forth by Jacob Behmen, a shoemaker of Gorlitz, A. D. 
1575-1624, in his profoundly speculative writings. The 
French Benedictines, on the other hand, entering less into 
religious controversies, chiefly concerned themselves about 
the instruction of youth, and scientific researches ; which have 
proved, even to tliis day, of no small service to the learned. 

Louis XIV. got embarrassed in a remarkable struggle 
between his own bigoted Romanism and his pride as a 
prince, in consequence of the pope's claiming the right of 
control over the interior regulations of the Gallican Church. 



326 THE NEW POLITICAL SYSTEM. 

The kings of France had long exercised tlie right of al- 
lowing to be managed, in their own name, the revenues of 
every vacant see, till it should be filled up ; as also the 
right of absolutely appointing to all offices of the inferior 
clergy. Louis wished to extend the exercise of this right 
to his conquered provinces ; and the pope, of course, would 
not sanction the measure. Louis, not without the influence 
of the Jesuits, wdio were also then at variance with the 
pope, and washed to see the power of the latter restricted, 
held a synod in Paris, A. D. 1682, at which four principles 
were established, as the pillars of Gallican Church liberty. 
By these principles the power of the pope w^as to be con- 
sidered as belonging only to spiritual, and not to temporal 
matters, and especially was no pope to be acknowledged 
as having the right of deposing princes, in any manner, or 
upon any pretence. Moreover, the popes were not to 
overrule, but only to have a voice in ecclesiastical assem- 
blies ; hence, to that voice was to be attributed no infalli- 
bility, except with the consent of the whole church. Fi- 
nally the exercise of Papal jurisdiction w^as, in all matters 
of right, to be regulated by the ancient French ecclesias- 
tical laws. Evident as it is, that these principles arose 
more out of civil policy than any interest for the Romish 
Church, yet they might have conduced in a very import- 
ant degree to the definite settlement of ecclesiastical mat- 
ters in France. But the popes refused to yield, in a 
single point, to anything of the kind ; and their determined 
resistance at length triumphed, in the reign of Lmocent 
XIL, A. D. 1691-1700. These principles, however, con- 
tinued to be cherished with great regard in France itself. 
Two things are hereby clearly evinced, namely, that men's 
notions of Papal authority had now become altered, and 
that the power of the pope had gradually declined even 
in the still bigoted Romish Church itself; also, that Papal 
policy remained unaltered, in not relinquishing any of its 
aUedged prerogatives. 



LEOPOLD I. AND JOSEPH I. OJb GERMANY. 327 



VI.— LEOPOLD L AND JOSEPH L OF GERMANY. 

On the death of Ferdinand III., in 1657, Leopold L 
was elected his successor in the empire of Germany ; he, 
however, was also under the influence of the Jesuits. In 
his reign, the "• Germanic Diet" was made a standing rep- 
resentative body, which afterward held its sittings at Ra- 
tisbon, from A. D. 1G63 to A. D. 1806. Leopold's first 
struggle was with the Turks, who, in 1662, had penetrated 
into Moravia, but were driven back by the imperial gene- 
ral Montecuculi. A second war with Turkey took place 
at the time when Louis XIV. invaded Germany, for the 
purpose of seizing the districts which had formerly belonged 
to Alsace ; and when Louvois, his minister of war, caused 
the Palatinate to be laid waste. Leopold was unable to 
repel these unjust aggressions, because he was then so 
fully occupied with the Turks. The Ottoman grand vizier, 
Kara Mustapha, advanced through Hungary, with two 
hundred thousand men, as far as Vienna, and besieged the 
city in 1682. But its inhabitants stood bravely on the 
defensive, till John Sobieski, king of Poland, with some of 
the German princes, came to their relief, and rejiulsed 
the Turks. The war was now transferred to Hungary : 
the electoral prince of Bavaria took Belgrade in 1688; 
and after Prince Eugene of Savoy had totally defeated 
the Turks, near Zenta, in 1697, Hungary, Transylvania, 
and Slavonia, came into the possession of Austria. Leo- 
pold I. died in 1705, at the time when the war, in which 
he took a special part, was being carried on respecting the 
Spanish succession ; and his successor, Joseph L, who 
prosecuted it with vigor, did not live to its termination. 
His brother, Charles VL, who was emperor A. D. 1711- 
1740, concluded a treaty with France in 1714, and by this 
treaty he exchanged Sardinia for Sicily, which had been 
obtained at the same treaty by the duke of Savoy. In a 



328 BRITAIN AND NORTH AMERICA. 

war that soon after broke out again with the Turks, Prince 
Eugene gained over them near Peterwardein, in 1716, 
and near Belgrade in 1717, such decided victories that 
they were obHged to cede Bosnia, Servia, and part of 
"Wallachia, to Austria. On the other hand, they got back 
the Morea, which till then had been retained by the Ve- 
netians. 

VII.— BRITAIN AND NORTH AMERICA. 

In England, after the abdication of Richard Cromwell, 
Charles II., of the house of Stuart, had returned from 
exile, and come to the throne. He reigned from 1660 to 
1685, v/ithout, however, having learned, by the misfor- 
tunes of his father, the wisdom which he so much needed. 
If the English put up with his arbitrary and inconsiderate 
conduct, it was, on the whole, because they were aware of 
the manifold miseries of revolution. He united himself 
with the policy of France, and hereby made the Dutch 
his enemies, to whom his terror at De Ruyter's appear- 
ance on the Thames induced him to cede the colony of 
Surinam. The parliament, finding that his partiality to 
Popery endangered the peace of the realm, pi^evailed with 
him to sign the Test Act, which they had carried through 
both houses in 1673, to prevent Papists from exercising 
power ; as also the Habeas Corpus Act, which was carried 
in 1679, for securing the personal liberty of the subject. 
His successor was James IL, from 1685 to 1689, who, be- 
ing himself a Papist, openly attempted to restore the as- 
cendency of the Romish Church. The struggle between 
the Tory party, who favored the stretch of royal preroga- 
tive, and the Whigs, who were their opponents, ended in 
the latter inviting to their assistance William III., prince 
of Orange, son-in-law to James, and stadtholder of the 
Netherlands, in pursuance of which he speedily arrived 
with an army of the Dutch. James II. fled to France ; 
the English and Scots declared the crown abdicated, and 



BRITAIN AND NORTH AMERICA. 329 

William was chosen as his successor, to reign jointly with 
his wife, Queen Mary. Ireland, which had refused to 
acknowledge AYilliam, because he was a Protestant, was 
reduced to obedience by force of arms. William restored 
the English Protestant constitution, and provided for 
England's prosperity and power by the measures of his 
government. His successor, Queen Anne, who reigned 
from 1702 to 1714, took a decided part in the war of the 
Spanish succession, by her distinguished general Marlbo- 
rough. After her death, the house of Stuart endeavored 
in vain to become reinstated in their forfeited rights ; and 
with George I., the elector of Hanover, the house of 
Brunswick, the present English royal family, came to the 
throne. 

The first English settlement in North America had been 
planted as early as 1585, and was named Virginia, but 
was of no continuance. A new settlement on the coast of 
New-England, in the year 1606, owed its origin to com- 
merce with the aboriginal Indians ; from this were peopled 
the settlements in Nova-Scotia and Canada. Disabilities 
and hardships in England, on account of religious differ- 
ences, soon contributed, with other causes, to promote the 
emigration of the English to North America; and thus 
commenced the cultivation of the provinces on the middle 
eastern coast. Hereupon many, from various parts of 
Europe, who had been sufferers on account of their reli- 
gion, took refuge in North America, where they could en- 
joy, without molestation, the opinions which they held for 
conscience' sake. Thus did Hugonots, Puritans, Qua- 
kers, and other religious sects, settle there together. Many 
Quakers emigrated with William Penn to the province 
named, from him, Pennsylvania, and built the city of 
Philadelphia. These emigrations increased every year, 
especially from Germany and England; and the Indian 
aborigines were continually forced further back westward. 
Their removal at first was by voluntary agreement, and 



330 CONFLICT OF SWEDEN WITH RUSSIA. 

for a reasonable indemnification ; afterward, occasion- 
ally, by war and defeat ; and, at last, by compulsory trea- 
ties, which, though adjudging them payment for evacuated 
tracts of territory, left them no option to remain or remove. 
Little concern was manifested about carrying to the poor 
Indians the true riches of the gospel, as an amends for the 
loss of their hereditary possessions, and only a few indi- 
viduals and primitive worthies, such as Eliot and Brainerd, 
and the Moravian missionaries, went among them with the 
spirit of apostles, and devoted their lives to this noble 
work of faith and labor of love. But the Europeans, in 
general, carried to them the sms and diseases of Europe, 
together with its specific poison, ardent spirits, and the 
numbers of the Indian tribes rapidly diminished. 

VIIL— CONFLICT OF SWEDEN WITH RUSSIA. 

While the wars of Louis XIV. occupied all the nations 
in the south and west of Europe, commotions of the same 
kind disturbed also the north-east, as if the thirty years' 
war had not given men enough of bloodshed. Christina, 
the daughter and successor of the great Gustavus Adol- 
phus, took more delight in scientific than political pursuits, 
and resigned the crown in the year 1654. But it was 
strange, indeed, that the daughter of the heroic champion 
of the Protestants, who sacrificed his life in defense of the 
evangelical faith, could offer such a reproach to the me- 
mory of her illustrious father as to go over to Popery, and 
spend the remainder of her life at Rome, where she died 
in the year 1689 ! She was succeeded in the throne by her 
relative, Charles Gustavus of Deuxponts, a turbulent, war- 
like prince, who subdued Poland, and prosecuted wars 
with Russia, Denmark, and Brandenburg, to the day of 
his death, which took place in 1660. He was succeeded 
by his son, Charles XL, who reigned till 1697. The 
ruler of Brandenburg was, at that time, the great electoi 



CONFLICT OF SWEDEN WITH RUSSIA. 331 

Frederic "William. Albert, the grand master of the Teu- 
tonic Knights, had appropriated to himself East Prussia 
as an hereditary dukedom, which, however, still remained 
as a fief of the Polish crown ; and the Teutonic Order had 
removed their seat to Mergentheim. But when Albert's 
family became extinct, Prussia devolved to John Sigis- 
mund, elector of Brandenburg, in 1618, whose grandson, 
Frederic William, who reigned from A. D. 1640 to 1688, 
was distinguished by the name of the great elector. By 
the peace of Westphalia he acquired Hither Pomerania, 
Magdeburg, Halberstadt, Cammin, and Minden. By the 
treaty of Welau, in 1657, he obtained from the Poles the 
independence of the Prussian dukedom. While, in the 
war of France with the Dutch, he was absent on his 
march for the relief of the Netherlands, the French, by 
their Swedish all'cs, invaded Brandenburg ; but Frederic 
William gained a celebrated victory over the latter in 
1675, near Fehrbellin, and nothing but another victory, 
gamed by the French themselves, preserved the Swedes 
from the loss of all their possessions in Germany. Even 
in the present instance, they were obliged to cede a por- 
tion of Pomerania to Brandenburg. Charles XI., of Swe- 
den, had, according to the policy of his time, been laboring 
to strengthen monarchy at the expense of the nobility ; 
and thus was liis son, Charles XII., the more absolute and 
independent upon his accession to the throne, A. D. 1697, 
in the fifteenth year of his age ; so that in the very earli- 
est years of his reign he involved himself in a war with 
Russia, Poland, and Denmark, w^hich occupied him to the 
end of his life. 

Russia had hitherto stood in no political relation to the 
other states of Europe ; its manners, customs, and mode 
of government had been more Asiatic than European, and 
it had not yet been touched by the culture of the West. 
This interposition was reserved for Romanov's grandson, 
the czar Peter, who reigned from 1682 to 1725 ; and was 



S32 CONFLICT OF SWEDEN WITH RUSSIA. 

the instrument of Russia's becoming not only great and 
powerful, but also politically metamorphosed. The Rus- 
sians were by his means brought within the compass of 
European nations. Peter left home as a rude, unpolished 
personage, of half-civilized manners ; but he had an ardent 
thirst for knowledge, and longed not only to be educated 
himself, but also to have his subjects educated, and to mul- 
tiply the means of increasing the prosperity of his domin- 
ions ; and, for these purposes, he traveled through several 
countries of Europe, got everything shown him that was 
worth seeing, and made very particular inquiries wherever 
he went, with the view of introducing into Russia, and 
imitating there, whatever was useful and available. He 
was especially anxious to further among his people the 
advantages of trade and commerce ; and, for this end, he 
spared no pains to construct a sea-port : for up to this time 
Russia had no properly maritime coast. Peter had taken, 
indeed, Azov from the Turks, and wished to have extend- 
ed his dominion to the Baltic, in its foreign trade, in order 
to employ Russian merchant vessels ; but the coasts of the 
Baltic in those regions belonged to Sweden, Peter now 
formed a coalition with Poland and Denmark, which na- 
tions were jealous, with himself, of the great power of 
Sweden, against the young Charles XII., a man of extra- 
ordinary abilities and intrepidity. The Swedish monarch 
first attacked Denmark, that he might be free from an 
enemy nearer home ; and, by his sudden appearance before 
Copenhagen, he put the Danish king, Frederic IV., in 
such terror that he was glad immediately to make peace. 
Charles lost no time in marching into Livonia against the 
Russians ; and, with only eight thousand Swedes, he put 
to the rout a Russian force of ten times the number. A 
third enemy, Augustus II., king of Poland, and elector of 
Saxony, still remained to be attacked. This prince, to ob- 
tain the crown of Poland, had made no scruple of aposta- 
tizing to the Romanists ; and a divine rebuke of his un- 



CONFLICT OF SWEDEN WITH RUSSIA. 333 

faithfulness was now to overtake him. Charles subdued 
Lithuania and Poland, set Stanislaus Leszinski on the 
Polish throne, and then pursued Augustus into his Saxon 
territories; where, in 1706, a treaty was concluded, by 
which Augustus abdicated the crown of Poland. Charles 
remained in Saxony till the following year, and prepared 
for further wars ; he also obtained, by his mediation with 
the emperor of Germany, for the Protestants in Silesia, 
greater freedom in the exercise of their religion. Mean- 
while the czar Peter had wrested Ingria from the Swedes, 
and founded the city of Petersburg, which he intended for 
his capital, and for his imperial residence. Charles ad- 
vanced triumphantly into Russia, but imprudently suffered 
himself to be diverted toward the Ukraine, where, near 
Pultowa, he was, A. D. 1709, so totally defeated by Peter, 
who had already annihilated another Swedish army com- 
manded by General Lowenhaupt, that he was compelled 
to seek his safety by flight into Turkey. The dethroned 
Polish king, Augustus IL, thought this a good opportunity 
to break his treaty with Charles ; therefore he invaded 
and reconquered Poland. Denmark also renewed the war 
with Sweden; and Peter now made liimself master of 
Livonia, Esthonia, and part of Finland. Charles was 
honorably received by the Turks, and contrived, after 
much solicitation, to stir them up even to a war with Rus- 
sia. Peter, as soon as the tidings of it reached him, ad- 
vanced into Moldavia, and was so surrounded by the 
Turks, on the banks of the Pruth, and lost so many of his 
troops, that his ruin seemed decided ; but his deliverance 
was effected by bribery, and Charles had notliing but his 
own powerless indignation to oppose to the treachery of 
the Turkish vizier. The Ottoman emperor, however, 
steadfastly refused to give up the king of Sweden into the 
hands of Peter upon any terms ; though the latter made 
him great offers for that purpose. Charles abode some 
years in Turkey, as if he had forgotten his native country. 



334 CHARLES VI., AND THE 

At length lie all at once recollected that he still possessed 
a kingdom at home ; so he mounted his horse, left Turkey 
with the utmost speed, and, reaching Stralsund, sailed 
from that port to Sweden, in 1714, where, finding that his 
old enemies had reunited agamst him, he endeavored to 
make peace with Russia; but, meanwhile, as his active 
mind would not suffer him to be quiet, he turned to the 
conquest of Norway; and there, under the fortifications 
of Fredericshall, to which port he was laying siege, he 
was killed by the shot of an assassin, in the year 1718. 
His country was afterward obliged to submit to great 
losses in the several treaties of peace which it had to make 
with Hanover, Prussia, Denmark, and Russia. It lost its 
possessions in Germany; it resigned Livonia, Esthonia, 
IngTia, and other portions of its territory to Russia ; and, 
as it had now become impoverished at home, by so many 
wars, it sunk down from its political elevation, as every 
country must, that, with so few interior resources, has only 
risen to greatness by the personal prowess of individual 
sovereigns. May we not say, It was good for Sweden to 
have been obliged to seek its welfare not thus precariously 
abroad, but in its own internal consolidation and develop- 
ment? 

IX.— THE EMPEROR CHARLES VI., AND THE 
PROVINCE OF BRANDENBURG. 

No sooner was the spmt of war damped at one end of 
Europe than it again broke forth at another. For, imme- 
diately after the ratification of peace in the north, a Spanish 
fleet took Sardinia and Sicily, but was defeated by a fleet 
of the English, in 1718; and a quadruple alliance having 
been formed between England, France, Austria, and Hol- 
land, the above-mentioned exchange of Sardinia for Sicily, 
and the elevation of the duke of Savoy as king of Sardinia, 
(in exchange for Sicily,) were hereby effected, A. D. 1720. 
But the death of Augustus, king of Poland, which took 



PROVINCE OF BRANDENBURG. 335 

place in 1733, gave occasion to renewed war, which arose 
as follows. The electing nobility of Poland were not 
unanimous in their choice of a new sovereign ; some pre- 
ferring Augustus II., the elector of Saxony ; and others, 
Stanislaus Leszinski. His son-in-law, the French king, 
Louis XV., interested himself for the latter ; but a Russian 
army compelled him to throw himself into Dantzic ; and 
upon the approach of the Russians to that port, which they 
seized in 1734, he was obliged to hasten on board one of 
his own vessels, and make his escape to France. Mean- 
while the Spaniards had gained advantages by their arms 
in Italy, whereby Austria, that had also declared for 
Stanislaus, found it necessary at once to treat for peace ; 
which, however, was not fully concluded till 1738. In the 
artful terms and adjustments of this peace, the policy of 
the French minister was very characteristic; for this treaty 
obliged the emperor, Charles VI., to make important sacri- 
fices for the sake of his domestic policy ; as, having no male 
heir, he had drawn up a settlement of inheritance, which 
received the name of the Pragmatic Sanction, the acknow- 
ledging of which by the other states of Europe was what 
he wished to obtain at all events. This settlement or- 
dained, that all the Austrian territories should pass to the 
next heir by primogeniture, consequently, to his eldest 
daughter, Maria Theresa, at his decease; and in return 
for the sanction of it, he engaged to accept the other 
articles of the treaty. By these articles the elector of 
Saxony retained the crown of Poland ; Stanislaus also 
retained the title of king, and had Lorraine given him in 
lieu of Poland ; the duke of Lorraine received instead of 
it the grand dukedom of Tuscany, the house of Medici 
having become extinct in 1737 ; and Lorraine, after the 
demise of Stanislaus, was to escheat to France. To Prince 
Charles of Spain the emperor gave up Naples and Sicily, 
and received in return the duchies of Parma and Placentia. 
While Austria was a loser in this respect, it had also, after 



od6 THE PAPAL POWER AT THIS PERIOD. 

its unsuccessful war with the Turks, which lasted from 
1735 to 1738, to resign to them Belgrade, Servia, and 
part of Wallachia. 

Brandenburg, under the great elector, rose from an 
insignificant German province to such eminence as was 
soon to become a focus of European history. By his hos- 
pitable reception of the fugitive Hugonots, and by other 
wise measures, he promoted agriculture and manufacturing 
establishments in his country, and hereby so aggrandized 
it, that his son, Frederic III., could undertake the obtain- 
ing of regal dignity to his family. Thus, in 1701, Prussia 
was ranked among kingdoms. Frederic William L, the 
son of Frederic III., who reigned from 1713 to 1740, a 
prince of firm and resolute character, sometimes harsh, 
but of strict integrity, and rather a soldier than a scholar, 
secured to the new kingdom its place among the powers 
of Europe, by his military establishments and his well- 
disciplined and effective army. Prussia was also, in his 
reign, the asylum of the Salzburg Protestants, who fled 
from the persecution moved against them by the bishop of 
that country, in 1731. 

X.— THE PAPAL POWER AT THIS PERIOD. 

The popes had all along endeavored to uphold their 
claims in Germany, but without much effect. Thus 
Clement XL, A. D. 1700-1721, still sought to exercise 
the prerogatives which the Papacy had been suffered to 
enjoy in the dark middle ages ; but now another age had 
arrived, that was not so easily to be imposed upon ; this, 
however, Clement either did not or would not see. He 
offended the emperor, Joseph I. The earlier emperors 
exercised the right of precedency in recommending to all 
vacant benefices ; but the pope was pleased to dispute this 
as an imperial right with Joseph L, and to consider it as a 
mere personal matter of Papal favor. Upon this, however, 



THE PAPAL POWER AT THIS PERIOD. 337 

he was obliged, in substance, to yield to the firmness of 
the emperor, though he took care, as usual with Papal 
policy, to have his own claims acknowledged, at least in 
form. The pope had again the disadvantage in another 
quarrel with Joseph I. The conquest of Parma having 
been provoked by the conduct of the clergy^ the emperor 
taxed them with part of the war expenses ; hut the pope, 
insisting that Parma was a Papal fief, disputed his right to 
do this, and threatened him with excommunication for con- 
tumacy in maintaining it. He was compelled to come to 
terms with the emperor, and to relinquish his protestations ; 
upon which occasion he was brought, likewise, to renounce 
the connection which he had formed with France against the 
imperial interest. In a contest about ecclesiastical rights in 
Sicily he was likewise obliged to yield. Against the elevation 
of Prussia into a kingdom, Clement XL protested with all 
his might, as if he had anticipated that this country would 
become as a strong wall of protection to Protestantism ; 
but his opposition was fruitless. Benedict XIII., his next 
successor but one, A. D. 1724-1730, was involved in a 
quarrel with Portugal, which ended with a renunciation of 
the pope's authority on the part of that country, in 1739 ; and 
he endeavored in vain to effect the canonization of Gregory 
VII., because the consent of the European princes to such 
a measure would have impHed their approbation of Gre- 
gory's principles of Papal government. The Romish 
Church, on the other hand, sought to make good its loss of 
territory and influence in Europe, by new acquisitions in 
other quarters of the world ; and herein the Jesuits were 
specially helpful to its aims. As Popery retained its pre- 
ponderance in the south of Europe, while the north decidedly 
inclined to Protestant liberty ; so also in South America 
did Popery gain the upper hand ; while in North America 
Protestantism was paramount. In the Portuguese settle- 
ments in the East Indies not only did the Romish Church 
in general, but the Inquisition in particular, as at Goa, ob- 

15 



338 RELIGIOUS STATE OP EUROPE. 

tain firm footing. And in China, and the countries bor- 
dering upon it, the Jesuits, under the cloak of science, 
introduced a Romish Christianity, in some respects assimi- 
lated to heathenism; which, amid many a bloody persecu- 
tion, has been retained by a small number to this day, and 
which, even in its Papal deformity, was not without some 
instances of individual pious missionaries and converts. 
On the other hand, in Japan, where the Jesuit missionaries 
interfered with political concerns, they were compelled 
entirely to withdraw ; and the Japanese have ever since 
been inexorably averse to Christianity, and to all free 
communication with the western world. 

XL— RELIGIOUS STATE OF EUROPE. 

The attempts that were made in the Protestant Church 
to unite its divided parties had proved unavailing ; the dis- 
tinction between Lutherans and the Reformed remained 
as wide as ever ; and as the synod of Dort, in 1618, gave the 
church of the Reformed in the Netherlands a definitive ex- 
terior form of its own, so was a perpetual system of doctrine 
and discipline molded in the Swiss Reformed Church, in 
1675, by its formula consensus, (formulary of agreement.) 

The case of the Protestant churches was that of a tree, 
which, the more it grows and gains a stronger trunk, the 
more lofty is its show of leaves and fruit ; and yet, the 
larger it becomes, the more woody is it within among the 
branches, so that, by little and little, it fails of its fruitful- 
ness. Then the gardener takes a fresh young scion, and 
plants it in a separate place in the garden, that it may also 
become a tree. Now, as the trees of Protestantism — for 
so we may call the various Protestant communions — were 
thus grown more and more woody, God provided that new 
communions should grow up in fresh and youthful life and 
power. Such was the revival he brought about by Spener, 
■who, at a period of deplorable lukewarmness, introduced 



RELIGIOUS STATE OF EUROPE. 339 

into evangelical Christendom more life and vigor, by in- 
sisting, with pious fervor and judicious zeal, on the distinc- 
tion between external dead orthodoxy, and real heartfelt 
conversion to God ; by setting before men, in a convincing 
manner, the difference between dead and living members 
of the church, and by endeavoring to bring this home to 
the consciences of its professed members ; a thing he could 
not effect without great opposition. Such, also, were the 
revivals God effected by Zinzendorf, who gathered about 
him the remains of the Bohemian and Moravian Brethren, 
and, in the year 1722, sought the building of primitive 
communities on the plan of their ancient tried and approved 
doctrine and discipline. Such was, also, what God wrought 
in England by Venn, Wesley, Whitefield, Romaine, and 
others, who broke away from the deathly cold and stiff 
formality of their day, and labored with great success to 
plant, in England and America, a renewed and vital Chris- 
tianity, despising persecution and opprobrious names. We 
are not to be surprised if there be seen growing, by little 
and little, even upon these fresh plants, a superfluity of 
unfruitful wood and bark, and unhealthy incrustations, for 
this is the nature of human things. The vitality of these 
Christians has been shown, especially in zealous labors for 
the conversion of the heathen, in which the}^ have dis- 
played at once quite different notions from those which 
inspired the converting methods of the middle ages, and 
the missions of the Romish Church, in that they have looked, 
not to the number, but to the excellence of their converts, 
and have used no other means of conversion than the 
power of the word of God. 

As early as in the year 1697 had been formed in Eng- 
land the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Fo- 
reign Parts ; and, at the commencement of the eighteenth 
century, was established the Danish Missionary Society. 
In the year 1733 the church of the United Brethren be- 
gan their labors among the heathen ; and some time after 



340 FREDERIC II. OF PRUSSIA, 

this, the Methodists entered upon their endeavors for the 
conversion of the negro slaves in the West Indies. 

A fresh breeze of spiritual life, about this time, passed 
over the Protestant Christian Church ; and though the 
various forms which the general revival assumed were 
molded either after the respective forms of church govern- 
ment among which they arose, or by the personal charac- 
ters of the men from whom they proceeded, or by other 
circumstances, yet it everywhere appeared that men were 
dissatisfied with the old stiff and cold religious formality, 
and were longing for a vernal season of spiritual life. 
Even in the Papal communion something of this descrip- 
tion was perceivable, among the Mystics, Quietists, PietistSy 
and some other classes of Roman Catholics ; and in 
the Greek Church, those who were called the people of the 
ancient faith were a contrast to the dominant system. 
The opposition, and, in some instances, the persecution, 
which those parties had to experience from the dominant 
churches, preserved them from lukewarmness and inaction. 
And there was a beneficial reaction which they imper- 
ceptibly wrought upon the parties that opposed them; 
and whether in arousing to emulation those from whom 
they were shut out, or by working like leaven among those 
in whose external connection they remained, its importance 
was still the same, and preserved the visible church from 
more general and fatal laxity. 

XII.— FREDERIC IT. OF PRUSSIA, AND MARIA 
THERESA. 

In the year 1740 the male line of the house of Haps- 
burg, having given to Germany sixteen successive em- 
perors, had become extinct. The throne of Prussia was 
filled by Frederic II., who raised his kingdom to become 
the second German power, and put all Europe in motion 
by his wars ; while, by his patronage of French education, 
he laid Germany open to a flood of infidelity. In the 



AND MARIA THERESA. 341 

same year the throne of the apostate western church was 
mounted by Benedict XIV., the first pope who, of his own 
accord, began to see that the period for unlimited Papal 
dominion over crowns and consciences was gone by ; a 
fact to which his successors have become willfully blmd. 
Superstition had long passed its meridian, and the darkness 
of infidelity had succeeded it to a very considerable extent. 
Wlienever superstition and bigotry shall regain ascend- 
ency, and become allied with infidelity, then will there, 
indeed, be suffering days for Christendom. 

Charles VI. had purchased, at a dear rate, the recog- 
nition of the Pragmatic Sanction : but the policy of this 
period no longer partook of the simpler and more honest 
principles of former ages ; it was now governed by mere 
self-interest. That emperor had no sooner departed this 
life, on the 20th of October, 1740, than ambition was dis- 
played in all quarters to obtain a share of his dominions. 
Frederic II., who had substantial claims to some Silesian 
principalities, invaded Silesia before the end of that year ; 
for his thrifty father had left him an army of seventy thou- 
sand well-disciplined men, and plenty of money. He de- 
feated the Austrians near MoUwitz ; and as Bavaria, 
Saxony, Spain, and France, had joined him with the same 
ambitious views, a large part of Austria, together with 
Bohemia, was reduced to their dominion, and the partition 
of Austria among themselves was now resolved on. The 
elector of Bavaria was made king of Bohemia, and even 
emperor of Germany, in 1745, with the title of Charles VII. 
Maria Theresa, the daughter and heiress of the late em- 
peror, Charles VI., applied to her faithful Hungarians, 
and, with their aid, she expelled the allied enemy from 
Austria and Bohemia. Moreover, George II., of England, 
brought an army to her assistance, drove the French out 
of Germany, and induced Frederic II. to make peace. 
The Austrian troops marched into Bavaria, and occupied 
the whole country : the emperor, Charles VII., fled to 



342 FREDERIC II. OF PRUSSIA, 

Frankfort, and died in that same year, 1745, at Munich. 
His son was obliged to recognize the Pragmatic Sanction ; 
and Francis, of Lorraine, who had married Maria Theresa, 
was chosen emperor, by the name of Francis I. Mean- 
while, Frederic II. had invaded Bohemia a second time, 
and had gained one victory after another ; likewise, a 
French army, under Marshal Saxe, had successfully op- 
posed the power of Austria in the Netherlands. Peace, 
however, was effected with Frederic, in 1745, at Dresden ; 
and even France acceded, in 1748, to the peace of Aix-la- 
Chapelle, after the empress, Elizabeth of Russia, had sent 
a Russian force into Germany to the assistance of Maria 
Theresa. Silesia was, by this treaty, given up to Prussia ; 
and Parma and Placentia to Spain. Thus terminated the 
war about the Austrian succession. 

How changeable politics at that time were, is evident 
from the seven years' war that not long afterward broke 
out. Maria Theresa, who employed the interval of peace 
in effecting wise and beneficial arrangements for the do- 
mestic government of her states, had still looked all along 
with no little dissatisfaction at the wresting of Silesia from 
her dominions, and had watched for an opportunity of re- 
covering it. Eight years had hardly passed since the treaty 
of Aix-la-Chapelle, when preparations were again on foot 
for another war. In the former contest for Silesia, the 
king of England had rendered her important help ; but now 
he became her enemy, by taking part with Prussia. The 
former hostile aUiance had been designed for the partition 
of Austria itself; but now Austria, Russia, Saxony, and 
France, united for the partition of Prussia. England had 
a quarrel with France respecting the North American colo- 
nies; as also the design of obtaining a protection for Hanover, 
which belonged to her king, against France. Brunswick, 
likewise, and Hesse, took the side of Frederic. The latter 
did not wait till he should be attacked, but marched his 
troops into Saxony by surprise, took Dresden, and made 



AND MARIA THERESA. 343 

the Saxon army prisoners, A. D. 1756. This brought a 
declaration of war against him from the electoral princes 
themselves, and Frederic was now menaced with danger 
on every side. Victory and defeat went on, alternating 
on both sides during the succeeding years, in which Fred- 
eric lost the hard-fought battle of Kunnersdorf, 1759, and 
his condition was by every one considered desperate, till 
he was again successful in the battles of Liegnitz and Tor- 
gau. Frederic's entire self-possession, his wise improve- 
ment of circumstances that were overlooked by others, and 
his quickness of discernment and penetration, allowed him 
not to despond in the most critical situations, but always 
prompted him to some means of relief. Indeed, it was 
God who upheld and prospered him : had Prussia fallen, 
the main support of Protestantism in Geraaany had fallen 
with it ; and this monarch was destined to bear a conspicu- 
ous part in the great political movements of Europe during 
many years to come. After the unexpected death of the 
Russian empress, Elizabeth, in 1762, circumstances changed 
very considerably in favor of Prussia. Her successor, 
Peter III., immediately made peace ; and the other powers, 
being weary of the impoverishing war, followed his exam- 
ple. Unimportant as appeared the first occasion of the 
war, nearly all Europe had become more or less involved 
in it ; and it was one consequence of the new politics, that 
nearly every war affected all Europe ; a consequence to 
which the undue concern to preserve the balance of power 
had not a little contributed. While in Germany, Austrian, 
Russian, and French armies were conflicting with the 
Prussians and the English, France and England were also 
prosecuting the war in their American colonies, and like- 
wise in India, Africa, and wherever these two nations had 
colonies or ships. Thus the seven years' war, as formerly 
that of the thirty years', extended to most parts of the globe. 
The French had lost nearly all their transmarine posses- 
sions, and were obliged to relinquish them to England, at 



344 FREDERIC II. OF PRUSSIA, 

the peace of Versailles, in 1763 ; but at the peace of Hu- 
bertsburg, which in the same month was concluded between 
Austria and Prussia, all on the continent was restored to 
its former footing, and Maria Theresa was obliged to re- 
sign Silesia to the Prussians, which it had been so much 
her object to gain. 

Frederic II., having, in the first half of his forty-six years' 
reign, shown himself to be the greatest general in Europe, 
enjoyed considerable repose during the remainder of his 
days, and was thus enabled, without molestation, to engage 
in improving the interior government of his country; but, 
once more, at nearly the close of his life, a contest arose 
between him and the emperor, Joseph II., concerning the 
claims which the latter made to a portion of Bavaria. 
This contest is, therefore, called the war of the Bavarian 
succession ; but it never openly broke out, and a treaty in 
1779 put an end to it without a single battle. Prussia had 
suffered exceedingly in the seven years' war, and it re- 
quired much time and attention to heal its many and severe 
wounds. Frederic applied himself in a fatherly maimer, 
and with powerful effect, to that purpose ; and though he 
did not please his subjects by the introduction of toll and 
excise, and the monopoly of tobacco, yet they could not but 
be convinced, by his other regulations, by the many proofs 
he gave of his love of justice, by his laboriousness and con- 
descending conduct, that he had their prosperity at heart. 
On the other hand, the partition of Poland, a work which 
was concerted and executed by Frederic IL, in conjunction 
with Russia and Austria, remains altogether inexcusable. 
What these three powers still left of Poland continued in 
powerless dependence, till some years afterward this also 
was entirely dismembered. It is true, the condition of that 
country was so bad, that, sooner or later, such must have 
been its fate. Its king had no authority ; the numerous 
nobility did as they pleased ; and the agricultural population, 
who were mere serfs, were grievously oppressed. While 



AND MARIA THERESA. 345 

everywhere, in the middle and west of Europe, a more free 
and liberal condition of the community, and legal constitu- 
tions far more effectually based, had become developed, 
and especially by the influence of the Reformation, the 
Poles still were held in the trammels of the middle ages, 
without any abatement ; and the consequence of this back- 
wardness to follow the march of the times was either to 
feel the violence of neighboring nations, or, which was 
equally destructive, to burst into change at once, and to 
spurn, with maddened impatience, all intermediate grada- 
tions of development. Both these effects were experienced 
by Poland. The former was from the three great powers, 
Prussia, Austria, and Russia ; the latter was from the infi- 
del and revolutionary spirit of France, which spread much 
more rapidly in Poland than in other countries, and the 
matured fruits of which our own times have so lately wit- 
nessed throughout the continent of Europe. 

Frederic IL, as a man and a king, deserved beyond 
many others the name of " the Great." His presence of 
mind and his spirit of prompt decision, his unshaken 
firmness and inexhaustible fertility of expedients in war, 
his unwearied diligence, his love of order and justice in 
peace, were exemplary. But, to Christian discernment, 
his character, in other respects, appears lamentable. His 
education had represented Christianity to him in a very 
unfavorable hght, and his strong prejudices in favor of 
French manners and French literature, together with the 
dry and formal manner in which learning was then prose- 
cuted in Germany, were the means of his becoming allured 
into intimacy with the fearfully increasing infidelity of 
France, and with those self-styled free thinkers, who 
rejected the inspired v/ord of God, and substituted their 
own notions in its stead. Among these stood pre-eminent 
the wretched blasphemer Voltaire ; and though Frederic 
clearly discerned his low, dishonest, and vulgar character, 
as the slave of avarice and of other vices, yet he idolized his 
15* 



346 RUSSIA. 

wit and acuteness, and overlooked the badness of the man 
for the sake of his great but disgracefully misapplied 
talents. Thus was this originally plain-mmded, and once 
well-inclined king seduced, so that he refused to concede 
to God and his word, to Christ and his disciples, that jus- 
tice which he so conscientiously accorded to his fellow-men 
in general. Or, more properly speaking, Frederic II. had 
a mind remarkably open to what is beautiful and great ; 
he was a person of magnanimity and sympathy, of equity 
and firmness ; but for that which is of the highest value, 
and of the utmost importance, for the truth revealed to 
mankind by God in Christ, he had no mind ; he was what 
the world calls a great man, but he was not a Christian. 

XIII.— RUSSIA. 

Peter the Great had endeavored to raise his people from 
barbarism, and by his encouragement of navigation, com- 
merce, and manufactures, had introduced a new epoch in 
the history of his country. But all endeavors of this sort 
are found to fail of the desired effect, unless the Christian 
education of the people, by the establishment of schools 
and by the diffusion of the word of God, go with them 
hand in hand. Moreover, the trammels of the Greek 
Church, and the great influence of its ignorant clergy, put 
insurmountable obstacles in the way, and thus hindered 
their advancement into more civilized life, so that education 
was almost entirely restricted to the higher ranks. Nor 
was any remarkable progress of the kind made under 
Peter's immediate successors, Catharine I., 1725-1727, 
Peter IL, 1727-1730, Anna, 1730-1740, Iwan III., 1740, 
Elizabeth, 1741-1762, and Peter III., 1762. Court 
intrigue, and the dominion of favorites, with quarrels about 
the right of succession, and dethronements by violence, pro- 
duced much general disquietude. More vigorous and 
important was the reign of the empress Catharine IL, 



THE EMPEROR JOSEPH II. 347 

1762-1796, who by successful wars, especially against the 
Turks, enlarged her dominions, was a patroness of learn- 
ing, planned wise arrangements for the interior, and exer- 
cised no inconsiderable influence in the national affairs of 
Europe. Since her days, Russia has taken an active part 
in all the political movements of the world. But Catharine 
also was an instance of one called great by the world, while 
really wretched and miserable, from being under the 
dominion of infidelity and sinful lusts. 

XIV.— THE EMPEROR JOSEPH II. 

In Austria, the German empress Maria Theresa reigned 
till the year 1 780. Her wars with Frederic II. have been 
already noticed ; and she was equally zealous and more 
successful in her endeavors to rule her subjects with pa- 
rental care. Her great activity and beneficence, her love of 
equity, her tolerance toward those of a different creed, and 
her enlightened views, to which Austria owes the removal 
of that instrument of torture, the rack, and the Inquisition; 
also her zeal in establishing and improving schools for 
general instruction, acquired for her the affection of her 
subjects, and made her memory valued by posterity. Her 
son, Joseph II., trod in her steps, and lost no time in en- 
deavoring to get rid of remaining abuses in church and 
state, as if he had anticipated the shortness of his reign. 
But, as he had not sufficient patience to wait till these 
amendments should be willingly received through the diffu- 
sion of more enlightened ideas, he put them forth at once 
by his own imperial authority ; and as he did not live long 
enough to habituate his subjects gradually to such new 
arrangements, they fell to the ground after his decease. 
He abolished the law which restricted the freedom of the 
press from making any remarks on the proceedings of 
government ; and he thus availed himself of public opinion, 
as a means of learning what change or amendment might 



348 THE EMPEROR JOSEPH II. 

be made for the general good. In criminal punishments 
and judicial awards he showed no respect of persons ; but 
the richest and greatest were amenable to the same penal- 
ties as the lowest ranks. He was also as accessible to the 
latter as to the former, and refused audience to none who had 
any complaint to bring before him. He was not fond of 
any remarkable expressions of homage, and labored with 
all his might to banish luxury. If these things made some 
men his enemies, his innovations in ecclesiastical matters 
made him still more ; for upon these the bigoted Romish 
clergy, both openly and secretly, did everything in their 
power to thwart him. 

Benedict XIV., who attained the Papal dignity in the 
year 1740, was an educated and scientific man, who was 
determined to think for himself; and he perceived that the 
Romish Church could not keep her influential position un- 
less she kept pace with the times, and this especially by 
improving the education of her clergy. For this reason 
he made it his chief care to effect a sort of reformation in 
the Romish Church, and he even meditated lessening the 
number of its holy days — a thing which, however, from the 
great opposition it met with, he was constrained to post- 
pone. He endeavored to keep peace with the princes of 
Europe, and succeeded in restoring a good understanding 
with Portugal. From pursuing a still more important un- 
dertaking, the abolition of the order of the Jesuits, his 
death alone prevented him, in the year 1758. His suc- 
cessor, Clement XIII., was elected through Jesuit influ- 
ence, and being entirely of the old Papal principles, he 
issued a bull for the protection of that order, but could not 
prevent the expulsion of its members from Portugal, and 
was obliged to let a German bishop go unpunished who 
liad written in strong language against the Papacy. Nei- 
ther could he do anything to humble the duke of Parma, 
who had curtailed the privileges of the clergy in his do- 
minions, although he tried against him the old and worn- 



THE EMPEROR JOSEPH II. 349 

out weapon of excommunication. For the Bourbon princes 
sided with the duke, and made use of the more effectual 
weapons of temporal power, from which nothing but death 
delivered him, in the year 1769. The succeeding pope, 
Clement XIV., {GanganelU, 1769-1774,) pursued the 
policy of Benedict XIV., and, after wise preparations, 
abolished the order of the Jesuits, in 1773 ;* therefore it 
is no wonder that he was taken off by poison in the follow- 
ing year. The history of the popes, since the year 1740, 
shows clearly that the period of humiliation to the pope- 
dom had arrived. 

The emperor, Joseph II., labored to render the Roman 
Catholics in his dominions independent of the pope. For 
this purpose he suffered no Papal rescript to be published 
without his own approval ; he abolished appeals to Rome, 
put the monastic orders under subjection to the bishops, 
and aimed at restoring to the latter their original diocesan 
independence. Neither ecclesiastical acknowledgments in 
money, nor ecclesiastics themselves, were permitted any 
longer officially to travel to Rome. Convents of friars 
and of nuns, unless some useful employments could be 
proved as belonging to them, were abolished, and new 
parishes were endowed out of their revenues. In vain 
were all the pope's remonstrances ; in vain his visit to 
Vienna; the emperor treated him courteously, but took 
care that he should be closely watched, and that he should 
in due time return without effecting anything. Similar 
efforts for ecclesiastical reform in the grand dukedom of 
Tuscany, and in the German electoral archbishoprics, were 
only frustrated in consequence of this emperor's death, 
which took place in 1790, and because his successor, Leo- 
pold II., did not inherit the same state of mind. But, 
after a time, the Papacy arose with its former strength, 
and its determined opposition to the best interests of man- 
kind. 

* Its restoration is uieutioned afterward. 



350 WAR OF INDEPENDENCE IN NORTH AMERICA, 

XV.— WAR OF INDEPENDENCE IN NORTH 
AMERICA. 

In the history of England, from the succession of the 
house of Hanover under George I. to the time of George 
III., besides the prominent part, ah-eady spoken of, which 
this country took in the contentions between Austria and 
Prussia, three events of great importance are principally to 
be noticed : the naval war which was carried on between Eng- 
land and France, on account of the North American posses- 
sions, and which began in 1756 ; the conquest of Bengal at 
the same period, together with the establishment of the power 
of the English East India Company, which has gTeatly ex- 
tended the commerce and power of England ; and, lastly, 
the war with the North American colonies, which ended 
in their independence. The English had laid taxes upon 
them, and had injured their trade by restrictions : to these 
the Americans were resolved not to submit, and thus pro- 
voked the English to adopt still severer measures. At 
length, in 1776, thirteen provinces declared themselves 
independent of the mother country ; this produced an open 
war, in which the American general, Washington, by his 
prudence and courage, and with the help of France and 
Spain, got the better of the English in 1781. Two years 
afterward, England found it necessary, at the peace of 
Paris, to acknowledge the independence of the thirteen 
United States, which immediately proceeded to settle their 
own constitution of government. The congress is their 
supreme council, which consists of two chambers, the sena- 
torial and the representative. Its president, who is elected 
every four years, and whose office was first filled by Wash- 
ington himself, is the general director of affairs. 

Every degree of personal liberty is guarantied by this 
constitution, beyond what has ever yet been done in any 
other civilized country ; hence it is to be regarded as a 
new attempt to bring about the welfare of mankind, and 



FRANCE AND THE PROGRESS OF INFIDELITY. 351 

that happy state of things which men in general have so 
long and so ardently desired. Full liberty is allowed to 
all of whatever creed : every religious fraternity is pro- 
tected in its own civil right to worship God after its own 
way ; but it must also find its own means of support. In 
this manner have the most opposite religious parties settled 
together in the United States, and have had more or fewer 
adherents. Many such parties have been counted, most 
of whom are of the Protestant profession. 

Notwithstanding all that is promised by the republican 
institutions of the United States, there are serious indica- 
tions that they will be severely tried ere long ; for they 
are not only threatened with great dangers from private 
and personal selfishness, but from the opposite interests of 
the several states. Tlie continuance of slavery in some of 
the states of America is a gi'eat evil and reproach, aggra- 
vated by their pretensions to be lovers of liberty. 

XVI.— FRANCE AND THE PROGRESS OF 
INFIDELITY. 

Louis XIV. was succeeded by his great-grandson, Louis 
XV., 1715-1774, during whose minority, continuing till 
1723, the kingdom was governed by the duke of Orleans. 
Unbridled licentiousness rose to an enormous height in the 
French court, and its example had the most injurious in- 
fluence upon public morals. Nor did things become better 
when Louis XV. personally assumed the government; for 
he was a man of no principle or character, but cared only 
for the gratification of his passions, and suffered himself 
and his people to be governed by unprincij)led ministers 
and vile mistresses. Thus France became involved in 
wars that were attended with the loss of her military glory 
and of her colonies, and with an enormous increase of the 
national debt. The disagreements between the court and 
the parliaments proceeded to a degi-ee of rancor that un- 
settled the whole nation ; and, meanwhile, the writings of 



352 FRANCE AND THE PROGRESS OF INFIDELITT. 

the French infidel philosophers, which were widely circu- 
lated, and read with avidity, were supplanting, in the 
hearts of the people, all moral and religious principle, and 
consequently all civil obedience. There had ever, from 
time to time, been seen existing in Christendom individu- 
als, and indeed whole sects, who had been wont to raise 
doubts respecting some one or more of the articles of the 
true Christian faith; and especially since the days of 
Arius, who lived about the year 325, there had been skep- 
tics upon the doctrine of the ever-blessed Trinity. The 
deep apostasy of the Romish Church, at about the period 
of the Reformation, produced this among other conse- 
quences, that, in Italy in particular, there were many such 
people to be found ; as that also in Transylvania there was 
an organized ecclesiastical body of Unitarians. These after- 
ward were joined by the Socinians, who likewise originated 
from Italy : they still longer enjoyed unmolested religious 
Hberty in Poland, and subsequently found a refuge in Eng- 
land and America. Beyond these went the so-called Free- 
tkmlcers, the Deists, and the NataraUsts, who became con- 
spicuous in England and France in the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries ; and in Germany they had individual 
adherents and imitators. While English and French free- 
thinkers erected for themselves, upon mere human philoso- 
phy, a distinct and specious system of pretended truth, and 
utterly rejected divine revelation, those in Germany aimed 
at uniting their own invented notions with the truths of 
Scripture, by wresting, deforming, and diluting the latter ; 
or they labored to disprove the authenticity of important 
texts ; or they set up their own reason in judgment upon 
the word of God, and received, as truth, only so much of 
the latter as the former approved of. But most success 
attended the diligence of those enemies of truth, the French 
philosophers, as they called themselves, who were not satis- 
fied with the rejection of particular points of Christian doc- 
trine, but meditated the entire overthrow of revealed reli- 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 353 

gion. These men, such as Voltaire, Maupertuis, D' Argens, 
La Mettrie, and others, assailed the Christian religion and 
its ministers with sparkling wit, raillery, and malignity ; 
and these ingredients, together with their fascinating and 
elegant style of writing, made way for the introduction of 
their books, by means of translations, among the fashion- 
able and educated circles of Europe, and hence among the 
people at large, not only throughout France, but Germany 
also, and other countries. Henceforth some affected to 
regard the institutions of religion as nothing but engines 
of state, intended to keep the ignorant in order. And peo- 
ple the jnore readily fell in with these new notions of infi- 
delity, because they were notions that favored the lusts of 
the depraved human heart ; for they had their very origin 
in the immorality and levity of the French nation. 

XVIL— THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 

With the French apostasy from the living God was 
necessarily connected the dissolution of political society ; 
for, under every government which is not held together by 
absolute despotism, obedience can be insured only by a 
sense of religion. Rousseau, D'Alembert, Diderot, and 
others, had not only labored in their writings to overthrow 
Christianity, but also sought to overturn all existing go- 
vernments ; and the disgraceful inefficiency of the French 
government, with the miserable management of the reve- 
nue, served to increase the people's desire for a change. 
Little regard was paid by them to the facts and experience 
of past times, or to rights of however long standing ; in- 
deed, the government itself, by its faithless and unprinci- 
pled policy, under a long succession of monarchs, had set 
a bad example, and corrupted the moral sense of the peo- 
ple ; and a great part of the existing rights, if they may 
be so called, were in fact oppressions upon the mass of 
the people, in favor of what were called the privileged 
orders. All these evils working together produced, at 



354 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 

length, that dreadful revolution in France, which, by its 
violent shocks, convulsed and changed the countries of 
Europe. 

Louis XVL, who, since the year 1774, had been on the 
throne of France, required no ordinary firmness and wis- 
dom to meet the critical condition of the country, and the 
violent fermentation of all parties, to maintain his own au- 
thority, and to remedy the mighty mischief. Although he 
would have been an estimable man in private life, having 
many good qualities, yet he had not the wisdom, the firm- 
ness of character, and the prompt decision which such a 
time demanded. The disposition whieh, in more peaceful 
times, would have rendered him a beloved and prosperous 
governor, facilitated his overthrow. By the ancient law 
of France, the nobility and priests were entirely exempt 
from government imposts and taxes : these were borne by 
the mercantile and middle classes, and by the peasantry ; 
and, at such a time as the present, when the load of na- 
tional debt was so great, and extravagance so profuse, 
these burdens had become intolerably oppressive. That 
the middle classes would no longer endure this with pa- 
tience is the less to be wondered at ; because the people 
felt that this wide distinction of ranks, and the luxuries of 
the one at the expense of the other, were unnatural and un- 
reasonable. Louis was, at length, prevailed upon to call 
together the States General, which had never been con- 
vened since the year 1626. This assembly consisted of 
six hundred deputed clergy and nobility, and the same num- 
ber of commons ; and they met on the 15th of May, 1789. 
But they soon disagreed among themselves, and the com- 
mons separated from the rest, and called themselves the 
Constituent National Assembly. These were immediately 
joined by many of the nobility and clergy, who voluntarily 
laid aside their high titles and privileges. The populace, 
stirred up by the duke of Orleans, and by other enemies 
of the king, began to commit great disorders, demolished 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 355 

the state prison in Paris, which was called the Bastile, and 
even menaced the safety of the royal family. In August, 
1789, the National Convention abolished all the privileges 
of rank, and proclaimed the liberty and equality of all 
French citizens. Most of the court, and a large part of 
the nobility, having left France, the king himself attempted 
to do the same, on the 20th of June, 1791, but was stopped 
on the road, and brought back to Paris. In the new con- 
stitution, which the constituent assembly published on the 
3d of September, 1791, Louis was allowed to remain king, 
but with little more than the shadow of authority ; and the 
new assembly, the National Convention, the majority of 
which consisted of enemies of royalty, called Jacobins, de- 
clared, on September 21st, of the next year, all kingly 
authority abolished, and constituted France a republic. 
Previously to tliit, an Austrian and Prussian army had in 
vain attempted to restore the absolute authoi'ity of the 
king, by invading France: the royal family were im- 
prisoned; and, by the month of September, 1792, some 
of the leading revolutionary demagogues had committed 
dreadful massacres in the metropolis. But the king's ene- 
mies were not content with having despoiled him of his 
crown, they determined to put him to death. He was ar- 
raigned before the convention, and although half of its 
members, indeed all but five, wished to save his life, yet 
he was publicly beheaded, by the guillotine, on the 21st 
of January, 1793 ; his queen, Marie Antoinette, a prin- 
cess of the house of Austria, whose conduct had long be- 
fore made her an object of great dislike, shared the same 
cruel fate on the 1 6th of the following October. 

In proportion as the revolutionary mania increased in 
France, it became more infectious in other countries. As 
the volcanic shocks, which forty years before destroyed 
Lisbon, extended also through Asia, and beyond, namely, 
across the ocean as far as Peru, so did the revolutionary 
spirit pass through various countries of the earth. In St. 



356 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 

Domingo, in the West Indies, there were proceedings as 
tumultuous as those in Paris. The National Convention, 
by setting up the principle that all kings must be extir- 
pated, virtually summoned all nations to rebellion. Many 
estimable persons in Germany were seized with the revo- 
lutionary mania, and advocated it for awhile, until its 
greatest horrors had come to their maturity. And their 
having done so was not without influence, in producing 
that unhappy sequel, which ensued after the attacks made 
upon France by the European powers, led on by England. 
The French armies, conducted by experienced generals, 
fought most vigorously ; and, among the armies brought 
against them, many a hand was slackened by the notion, 
that the French were only fighting in the cause of the op- 
pressed. The French soon made themselves masters of all 
the German possessions beyond the Rh'ne, together with 
Belgium and Holland. But while, by theii- splendid victo- 
ries, they were recovering the military glory which they had 
lost in the seven years' war, the condition of Paris, under 
the mad misrule of the Jacobins, Marat, Danton, Robes- 
pierre, and others, was the bitterest satire upon the loudly 
extolled liberty of the French people. France presented 
at this time a most shocking scene of barbarities. Politi- 
cal parties persecuted and crushed one another in rapid 
succession. Blood was shed like water ; and no persons 
were secure of life against whom could be raised the slight- 
est suspicion of discontent with the new misrule, or who 
had incurred the private resentment of any one in au- 
thority. The pretended liberty consisted only in the cir- 
cumstance, that the strongest who happened to preside at 
the helm for awhile, had it in his power to commit the 
most dreadful acts of injustice, without being immediately 
called to account. The infatuated rage of the nation was 
not satisfied with having no longer a king ; it would not 
even endure the thought of God as above itself. The 
antichristian character of this revolution could not be con- 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 357 

cealed. On the ISth of November, 1793, the cathedral 
of Paris was converted into a temple of reason, and a wo- 
man of ill fame was carried about in procession as the 
goddess of reason, when it had been publicly declared that 
there was no God in heaven. Withm a few days after 
this, two thousand Popish churches in France, whose 
priests had been driven away, were converted into temples 
of reason and banqueting houses ; and the sabbath, which 
had long been openly profaned, as is generally the case in 
Popish countries, was abolished. When this raging mad- 
ness had cooled a little, a public declaration was issued, on 
the 4th of May, 1794, that the French nation acknowledged 
the Supreme Being, and the immortality of the soul, and 
a festival was ordered for the Supreme Being. At length 
when Robespierre, who had ruled with uncontrolled des- 
potism, had breathed out his dark soul at the guillotine, 

1794, and the French had begun to be weary of their in- 
testine scenes of blood and tyrannical oppressions, the Na- 
tional Convention was dissolved, on the 26th of October, 

1795, and a new government was formed under the name 
of the Directory, consisting of two chambers, the council of 
ancients, and the council oifive hundred, and an executive 
of five directors. 

The wars which were carried on by France, in Upper 
Italy, and in the Upper and Lower Rhenish provinces, as 
well as the commotions in other countries connected with 
the same, occasioned such perpetual alterations in the sys- 
tem of state partition, that the most recent maps of Europe 
were almost useless. A second partition of Poland took 
place in 1793, and a third in 1795 ; the Austrian Nether- 
lands, Savoy, and Nice, were conquered and consigned to 
other hands. Mantua and Milan fell, and the Rhine was 
made the boundary of France. Prussia, Sweden, Spain, 
and Tuscany, made peace with France in 1795 ; Austria, 
in 1797 ; and in this same year was opened the congress 
of Rastadt. 



358 THE FRENCH REYOLUTION. 

England, for the most part, was quietly enjoying the 
blessings of internal peace, while the continent was being 
rent by revolution and war. At the same time that im- 
provements were being made in the affairs of the kingdom 
at home. Lord Cornwallis had subdued Tippo Saib, and 
had compelled him to pay a large sum of money, and to 
cede a great part of his dominions to England. 

Pope Pius VI. had from the beginning shown himself 
opposed to the principles of the revolution, on account of 
its threatening the entire subversion of his church, and 
had pronounced his anathema against it ; but such ecclesi- 
astical weapons had now become blunted and harmless. 
The French carried him off as a prisoner to France, where, 
however, he persisted in asserting his dignity with inflexi- 
ble firmness, and died in the year 1799. 

Meanwhile, Napoleon Bonaparte, a bold French gene- 
ral, (who was born in Corsica, 15th August, 1769,) having 
signalized himself in the campaigns of Upper Italy, had 
undertaken an adventurous expedition to Egypt, for the 
purpose of oj)ening an overland communication with India, 
in order to wrest the commerce of the East out of the 
hands of the English. In the year 1798 he seized Malta; 
and, after a successful battle near the Pyramids, he ob- 
tained possession of all Egypt; but the British admiral, 
Nelson, destroyed the French fleet in the bay of Aboukir; 
as he had before destroyed the French flotilla designed for 
a descent on England. A new war being now declared 
against France by Austria, Russia, England, and Turkey; 
together with the perplexed and inefficient state of the 
French government ; Bonaparte was compelled to return 
to Europe, in 1799. He hurried back with all speed to 
Paris, and put down tJie Directory ; whereupon came to be 
tried, under the name of the Consulate, a fourth experi- 
ment for the government of France. Three consuls, as- 
sisted by several inferior bodies of directors, were appointed 
to hold authority for ten years ; and Bonaparte, as first 



NAPOLEON, EMPEROK OF THE FRENCH. 359 

consul, henceforth made it his prime object to bring back 
France (which had suffered several losses of late) to the 
height of triumph. And, indeed, with the aid of General 
Moreau, he became in a short time so successful, that 
every government, between the years 1801 and 1803, 
made peace with France. This peace, however, was not 
of long continuance. 

XVIIL— NAPOLEON, EMPEROR OF THE FRENCH. 

As the consulate of ancient Rome merged into imperial 
power, so, in a very little time, did the consulate of France ; 
and to this the political constitution tended by degrees. 
Out of the five directors came three consuls, and out of the 
three consuls came one consul for life, (Bonaparte,) in the 
year 1802 ; and only two years after this, on the 18th of 
May, 1804, was the single consul elected emperor of the 
French, by the name of Napoleon I. Henceforth he was 
distinguished by his carrying the selfish principle to its 
highest pitch, by his making everything subservient 
merely to his own interests, by his total disregard of 
rights and persons, and by his openly aiming at universal 
empire. 

Thus France again stood at the head of European policy, 
from which it had been degraded by Prussia, after the 
death of Louis XIV.; and all the countries of Europe, 
England excepted, had to endure, under this second Attila, 
this " scourge of God," Napoleon, a season of humiliation, 
which might be regarded, at least by Germany, as a right- 
eous rebuke from Heaven, for the open apostasy of so 
many from the holy and everlasting gospel. During the 
war, which again broke out in 1803, Austria, (by the 
battles of Ulm and AusterUtz, in 1805,) Prussia, (by the 
battles of Jena and Auerstadt, in 1806,) and Russia, (by 
the battles of Eylau and Friedland, in 1807,) were made 
to feel the humbling hand of God, by the arms of Napo- 
leon. Austria was forced to give up Venice, the Tyrol, 



360 NAPOLEON, EMPEROR OF THE FRENCH. 

and its western dominions ; the Germanic-Roman empire 
(which, under the title of Roman, had lasted eighteen hun- 
dred years,) ceased in 1807 ; and the emperor Francis II., 
the successor of Leopold IL, was now only emperor of 
Austria. Prussia lost its possessions between the Rhine 
and the Elbe, and its portion of Poland. England, which 
had frustrated Napoleon's attempt on Acre, and had driven 
the French from Egypt, at the battle of Trafalgar, by her 
Admiral Nelson, had destroyed the maritime power of 
France, and taken possession of most of the French and 
Dutch colonies in ditferent parts of the world, lost Hanover. 
Against England, Napoleon formed the Confederation of 
the Rhine, and assumed the title of its " Protector." Ba- 
varia, Wirtemberg, and Saxony were raised to kingdoms. 
Hesse, Brunswick, Hanover, and the portion of territory 
which had been taken from Prussia, were formed into the 
new kingdom of Westphalia, and given to Jerome, a bro- 
ther of Napoleon. To Joseph, another brother, Napoleon 
gave the kingdom of Naples, and to his brother Louis the 
kingdom of Holland. Italy had previously become a king- 
dom, which Napoleon took into his own possession. In all 
countries of the middle and south of Europe territorial pos- 
session had undergone, within the last few years, frequent 
changes, which still continued through succeeding years. 
The royal house of Braganza in Portugal was, in the year 
1807, driven to Brazil. The king of Spain was com- 
pelled by the base treachery of Napoleon, in 1808, to ab- 
dicate, and Napoleon's brother, Joseph, was removed from 
the throne of Naples to that of Spain. The crown of 
Naples was conferred on Napoleon's brother-in-law, Murat. 
King Louis of Holland resigned his sovereignty, because 
he found it impossible to comply with Napoleon's restric- 
tions upon Dutch commerce with England ; and thus Hol- 
land was added to the French territory, in 1810. Eng- 
land had taken possession of the Danish fleet, that it might 
not be turned against her. A fresh war of France with 



NAPOLEON, EMPEROR OF THE FRENCH. 361 

Austria, in 1809, ended with another loss of territory to 
the latter country ; by which it was cut off from the Me- 
diterranean. In the same year the Swedish royal family, 
of the house of Vasa, was dethroned by a revolution ; and 
soon afterward the French general, Bernadotte, was cho- 
sen king of Sweden. 

At Rome, Pius VII. had been elected to the popedom, 
in the year 1800 ; and though, by the concordat of 1801, 
he restored a good understanding with France; yet he 
soon found himself in a contest with the revolutionary 
leaders. Unfavorable as were the circumstances of the 
times to the Papal power, he persisted, like his predeces- 
sor, with iron firmness, in its piinciples and claims, and 
lost none of his spirit amid the political storms that over- 
whelmed him. He had, indeed, yielded, in 1804, to anoint 
Napoleon emperor of the French ; but remaining immova- 
ble against all further demands of this military despot, he 
hereby brought upon himself the humiliating seizure of 
the land of the church, by Napoleon, in 1809, who was 
not to be deterred by the Papal ban. Napoleon added 
Rome to the French territory, made the pope his prisoner, 
and brought him to Fontainbleau. Still Pius VII. would 
concede nothing; and it appeared that the time for the 
total annihilation of the Papacy was not yet arrived. 

Meanwhile, in Spain and Portugal violent opposition 
was kindled against the French. The hereditary royal 
families had been driven from those countries ; but the 
people at large were far from being satisfied with their 
foreign rulers, and rose in mass against them as oppressors. 
England came to the assistance of the Portuguese and 
Spaniards; and, after four years of obstinate fighting, 
Wellington, the English general, it will be seen, drove the 
French out of Spain. 

16 



362 "WAR OP INDEPENDENCE IN EUROPE. 

XIX.— WAR OF INDEPENDENCE IN EUROPE. 

Napoleon, in 1810, had come into more peaceful con- 
nection with Austria, by his marriage of Maria Louisa, 
the daughter of the emperor Francis II. ; and even Prussia 
had joined him ; when, in 1812, he determined to fall upon 
Russia with a war of extermination. He crossed the 
Russian frontier with an immense army, to which nearly 
every country of Europe, except England and Sweden, 
had furnished its contingent. At the commencement of 
this campaign he was victorious in several battles, and en- 
tered Moscow, the ancient capital of the Russian empire. 
Here God had set a bound for him. This large city was 
set on fire in every part of it, and was burned to the 
ground : thus the invaders were deprived of spoil and of 
shelter ; provisions failed ; the Russian army, still not dis- 
pirited, was on the advance, and Napoleon found himself 
compelled to attempt a retreat at the most unfavorable 
season of the year, at the beginning of a Russian winter. 
All the best calculated expedients, all military talent and 
skill, were now useless. The cold of a northern winter, 
to which the French had never been inured, and especially 
the extraordinary cold of that winter, of 1812, the want 
of the common supports of life, which was the more felt 
m consequence of such severe weather, and the Russian 
army mercilessly pursuing them, swept away hundreds 
of thousands of them. All order in their retreat was gone ; 
none could think of anytliing but self-preservation ; and, 
after the dreadful loss which the passage of the Beresina 
occasioned, there were only a few masses of the grand 
army left, and these endeavored with the utmost precipi- 
tation to escape into Germany. The most insensible could 
hardly help acknowledging that God had specially inter- 
posed to effect this deliverance of Europe ; and a hope be- 
gan to be indulged by the nations that the time was come 
for breaking in pieces the yoke of the oppressor. The 



WAR OF INDEPENDENCE IN EUROPE. 363 

war was now no longer a matter of political adjustments, 
but of self-security ; a war of liberation from a military 
despot, who had resolved to rule over all. The successes 
of the English army, under Wellington, in the Spanish 
peninsula, were also signal. He drove the French from 
Oporto, compelled them to give up their other acquisitions 
in Portugal, entered Spain, and obtained a brilliant vic- 
tory at Talavera. The Spanish authorities, however, were 
so jealous of the superior skill of a foreigner, that they 
would not support Wellington, and in consequence he did 
not advance far into Spain, but the English acquired credit 
for valor, and Wellington for skill as a general. 

The success of the British in Portugal was justly 
deemed the principal impediment to the tranquillity of the 
French in Spain ; and Napoleon, therefore, sent Massena 
with overwhelming forces to drive the British entirely out 
of the peninsula. The extent of Massena's forces made 
it necessary for Wellington to be resolute in his determina- 
tion to act on the defensive. As Massena approached he 
retreated before the enemy, leisurely and in order, until 
attacked at Busaco, when he turned on his pursuers and 
thoroughly defeated them. Wellington still saw reason for 
retreating, his numbers being small in comparison with 
Massena's. He fell back on the impregnable lines of 
Torres Vedras, where he resolved to remain till famine 
should compel Massena to retire. The French were 
astounded at Wellington's having halted at Torres Vedras. 
The marshal, Massena, supposed that the British were 
hastening to their ships, according to the words of Napo- 
leon, who, in a contemptuous manner, had threatened to 
compel them to flee thither as their only safety. Massena 
knew that it were madness to attack his enemy, and there- 
fore had no option but to retire, or to sit down and watch 
the English position. 

Wellington was not mistaken. Hunger and disease were 
making worse havoc than the sword could have done, and 



WAR OF INDEPENDENCE IN EUROPE. 

Massena's only escape from destruction was an instant re- 
treat. The retreat was marked by every species of wanton 
cruelty and revengeful rapine. Wellington followed closely 
on his rear, and the British were, almost without exception, 
successful in their attacks. Massena was recalled, and 
Marmont was appointed as Wellington's opponent. The 
success of the British had no doubt been far more signal, 
but for the glaring ignorance or mismanagement of the 
Spanish generals. 

Wellington besieged and took Ciudad Rodrigo and Ba- 
dajoz, and Marmont proved more unsuccessful than Mas- 
sena in opposing him, and by an injudicious movement 
gave Wellington an opportunity, which he instantly seized, 
of totally routing the French. The British general availed 
himself of his successes, and pushed his way to Madrid, 
where he was received with enthusiasm ; but Spanish jea- 
lousy again operated, and made it imprudent for him to 
remain there. 

These successes gave the more favorable opportunity 
for the northern nations to unite against the French auto- 
crat. The Prussians were the first to fall away from 
Napoleon : they rose against him as one man, under the 
command of General Bliicher ; and though Napoleon, 
having reinforced himself with fresh troops, gained the 
battles of Liitzen and Bautzen, in May, 1813, yet he was 
worsted in other encounters. lYhen Austria likewise de- 
clared against him, and had proposed the general emanci- 
pation of Germany, he was so totally defeated in the great 
national battle of Leipsic, on the 18th of October, 1813, 
that he fled with the utmost speed to France. The three 
sovereigns, Frederic William III., of Prussia, the emperor, 
Francis II., of Austria, and the emperor, Alexander, of 
Russia, gave God the glory, and publicly offered thanks 
for this wonderful help and deliverance. Napoleon's bro- 
ther, Joseph, had already been driven from Spain, through 
the utter defeat of the French army at Vittoria, by Wei- 



WAR OF INDEPENDENCE IN EUEOPE. 365 

liiigton ; for the Spanish Cortes, by many painful lessons, 
having been taught the folly of the jealousy of their gen- 
erals, gave the command of their armies to Lord Welling- 
ton. By a series of splendid operations, he drove the 
French from their positions on the Ebro and the Douro, 
and compelled them to leave the country, or fight a pitched 
battle to preserve their conquests ; and Joseph adopted 
the latter alternative, in which he was completely de- 
feated, with the loss of his artillery, baggage, and military 
chest. 

After the battle of Leipsic, the allied armies advanced 
across the Rhine, and, after Napoleon had thrown many a 
serious obstacle in their way, and occasioned them many 
a loss, they took possession of Paris, on the 31st of March, 
1814. In the mean time Wellington had more than once 
defeated Soult, had taken Bordeaux and Toulouse, and 
thus had opened his way into France. Napoleon, who by 
his despotic government had also given dissatisfaction to a 
considerable part of the French nation, was now dethroned, 
and banished to the isle of Elba. The Bourbon family 
was restored, with Louis XVIIL, the brother of the mur- 
dered Louis XVI., to the throne of France ; and the na- 
tion was obliged to give up all the territory which, since 
the year 1792, it had takpn from other countries. 

A congress of the allied sovereigns met at Vienna, on 
the first of November, 1814, to deliberate on a settlement 
of the present afl:airs of Europe. But as yet all was not 
suffered to be quiet. Most unexpectedly, on the first of 
March, 1815, Napoleon again appeared in France, was 
received by the French with great demonstrations of joy, and 
had, by the time he reached Paris, again mustered an army 
around him. The Bourbons were obliged to flee, and the 
European powers had to renew the war. In the great 
battles of Ligny, Quatre Bras, and Waterloo, which began 
on the 16th, and terminated on the 18th of June, the desti- 
nies of Europe were again decided, by the firmness with 



366 "WAR OP INDEPENDENCE IN EUROPE. 

which the English troops maintained their ground under 
Wellington, against Napoleon at the head of his chosen 
troops. Thus Napoleon was defeated by the English and 
Prussian armies, the former commanded by the duke of 
Wellington, and the latter by Marshal Bliicher ; and soon 
after he abdicated the crown. The English, to whom he sur- 
rendered, when he found he could not hope to escape by sea 
to America, placed him in the island of St. Helena, where 
he was allowed personal liberty, but closely guarded, and cut 
off from all further intercourse with Europe. By the time 
that the news of his death, by an hereditary disease, arrived, 
in 1821, a new period and a new order of things had 
commenced. 

France, though compelled to indemnify the allies for a 
very considerable amount in the expenses of the war, yet 
was, upon the whole, very gently handled, as if the entire 
blame had been suffered to rest on the head of her banished 
chief. She was again restricted within her boundaries of 
the year 1790, had to give up to Prussia a portion of the 
left bank of the Rhine, to restore Upper Italy to Austria, 
and to surrender several of her colonial possessions to 
England. Russia now obtained the greatest part of Poland ; 
another part of that country, with the province of Saxony, 
was allotted to Prussia. Belgium and Holland were united 
into one kingdom of the Netherlands, and assigned to the 
house of Orange. Hanover, Savoy, Naples, Spain, and 
Portugal, were restored to their rightful sovereigns. In 
Germany there was formed, by articles agreed to on the 
8th of June, 1815, the alliance of the German states, at 
their meeting for that purpose in Frankfort, which contains 
thirty-eight greater and lesser sovereign states. 



CHANGE TO THE PRESENT STATE IN EUROPE. 367 



XX.— CHANGE TO THE PRESENT STATE OF 
THINGS IN EUROPE, A. D. 1839. 

On the 26th of September, 1815, Russia, Austria, and 
Prussia, formed what was called " the holy alliance ;" to 
which nearly all the European powers, except England and 
the pope, acceded. State policy, as grounded hitherto 
upon a mere physical equilibrium, had now proved its own 
nothingness; and these powers professed henceforth to 
make religion the groundwork of all policy, and to subject 
national affairs, both foreign and domestic, to the princi- 
ples of religion. But the question must be asked, What 
did these powers mean by religion ? We much fear, not 
that of the New Testament. Yet open and avowed in- 
fidelity was thus brought more and more into contempt. 
Some desire for the support of religious principles was 
evinced by men in various countries ; this appeared by the 
jubilee of the Reformation in 1817, and by the Bible and 
other societies, and the increasing number of living wit- 
nesses to the truth in the pulpits : neither was it any 
longer regarded as a mark of polite education to despise 
or slight the gospel. But, as has been the case hitherto 
in every age of the Christian church, the number of real 
disciples has continued to be vastly the minority, and the 
multitude at large have looked for their welfare in the 
improvement of their temporal condition, not in a spiritual 
life and conversation, and in serious and entire conversion 
and obedience to God. The gospel had now gained in 
general estimation ; but the nations of Europe, notwith- 
standing some of their eminent princes have nobly come 
forward with the acknowledgment, have not gone so far 
as to admit the principles of the gospel as their rule in all 
mutual relations. It has been too generally thought, that 
sufficient respect is paid it, by giving it a place collaterally 
with other sources of knowledge and rules of life, instead 



368 CHANGE TO THE PRESENT STATE IN EUftO^E. 

of exalting it above all others. The attention of men in 
general has been chiefly turned to the reforming of politi- 
cal constitutions, and they have been expecting all kinds 
of good from the restoration of a representative system, 
which indeed has been effected in several German states, 
but has proved no radical cure for national evil; and why? 
Because such a cure requires that Christ, before all things, 
should govern those representative bodies themselves 
from which the amendments and improvements have been 
looked for. But the distrust which this sort of constitution 
implies, with respect to princes as such, could not fail to 
increase, by reason of those disappointed expectations in 
the people which had been raised : and with such a distrust 
we find intimately connected that lawless revolutionary 
spirit, which has never entirely been got rid of; and this 
is a spirit of antichristianity, which works in opposition 
to all order and subordination. 

This spirit of individual self-will has received a mani- 
fest increase from another quarter, namely, from the 
Papacy; which, ever since its restoration, has boldly 
grasped, as with the arms of a polypus, whatever seemed 
likely to be profitable in the new state of things. Pius 
VII., having, in 1814, regained his liberty and ecclesiasti- 
cal patrimony, at once set about reviving the old principles 
of Popery. For this purpose, in 1814, he reinstated the 
order of the Jesuits in their former privileges and efficiency, 
and labored to the utmost to recover his influence over 
Germany, where the ecclesiastical princes had lost all 
their spiritual power. His successor also, Leo XII., 
1823-1829, labored in the same spirit ; he anathematized, 
as Pius VTI. had done in 1816, the Bible Societies, rebuilt 
the prisons of the Inquisition, and solemnized a Papal 
jubilee in 1835. On the one hand, indeed, and corres- 
pondently to the return to the Christian faith on the part 
of Protestant Germany, there had appeared in the Roman 
Catholic countries a revival of attachment to the Popish 



CHANGE TO THE PRESENT STATE IN EUROPE. 369 

Church ; but, on the other hand, a multitude of revolution- 
ary ideas and projects had become rife, in consequence of 
the unsettled state of things during the war. The Papacy, 
while it sought to suppress this spii'it, and to bring not only 
civil but religious liberty once more into bondage and im- 
plicit submission, hereby stirred up that active opposition 
which has labored to vent itself in the commotions of 
Spain, since 1820 until now ; as it also did in Italy, 
Portugal, Naples, and Piedmont, during the years 1820 
and 1821. But in the most striking manner of all was 
shown, by the revolution in France, in 1830, how much 
the Papal system of oppression had been really helpful to 
the plans of the movement party, which had all along been 
secretly increasing. Charles X., who, in 1824, had suc- 
ceeded his brother, Louis XVIII., in the government, and 
upon whom the warnings of the revolutionary period had 
been expended in vain, had made it his endeavor to sup- 
press the new constitution of France, and thus provoked 
the people to a most violent resistance, which ended only 
with liis dethronement and banishment, and with the eleva- 
tion of Louis Philippe of Orleans to the government of the 
French. This event ran like electricity to other countries, 
and occasioned new revolutionary exertions abroad. The 
Belgians tore themselves away from Holland, and chose 
Leopold of Saxe Coburg as a king of their own. The 
Poles endeavored, by a powerful insurrection, to regain 
their long lost independence ; but, after an indignant 
struggle, they again succumbed to the superior strength of 
Russia. The spirit of insurrection broke loose likewise in 
the German states ; but showed itself more in secret con- 
spiracies than in open rebellion. Already had the Spanish 
provinces in America, as Mexico, Guatimala, Colombia, 
Peru, Chili, and Buenos Ayres, since the year 1810, and 
after long and sanguinary conflicts, obtained their inde- 
pendence. The Greeks, with the aid of the European 
powers, freed themselves from the Turkish yoke; and 

16* 



370 CONCLUSION. 

afterward obtained Otlio of Bavaria as their king. And 
in Portugal and Spain, since 1831, have the principles of 
a more liberal form of government found acceptance with 
many, and have introduced a greatly altered state of things. 
The Papacy has suffered considerable losses by all these 
movements and changes ; but without resigning, on that 
account, any one of its claims or hopes. England, which 
alone of all the nations of Europe had remained all along 
spared from hostile invasion, sought, by some changes in 
her constitution, to provide against violent revolution, for 
which, even in that country, there was no want of materials 
and desires ; and in this she has reaped the reward of 
her having more steadfastly adhered to the doctrines of the 
word of God, of her having openly declared her reverence 
for things sacred, and of her manifold labors (though these 
indeed have been rather the work of private individuals 
than of the nation) to extend the divine blessing to Chris- 
tian as well as heathen countries, by means of Bible, Mis- 
sionary, Tract Societies, and other Christian benevolent 
institutions. 

CONCLUSION. 

The history of mankind has, according to the chronology 
of some, already completed a course of about six thousand 
years ; and has all along hitherto come short of its grand 
object. All the powers of man have, in their course, either 
successively or together, been put forth in the attempt to 
bring about the happiness of the world. Power and liberty, 
great empires and petty states, the luxury of wealth, the 
simplicity of rustic life, and the arts and sciences, all in 
their turn have been proposed and applied, as means for 
gecuring the welfare of mankind, and yet have not fur- 
nished the remedy. The Son of God himself has come 
from heaven, and by his sufferings, death, and resurrection, 
has become the Redeemer of our race ; a Deliverer, who 
in his own body and blood has opened the spring of a new 



CONCLUSION. 371 

life and of a complete restoration. But individuals only 
have hitherto been effectually liberated thereby ; the fami- 
lies of mankind at large are still in the bondage of inward 
corruption, and in a pitiable outward condition conformable 
to it. As long as all swords are not beaten into plough- 
shares, and all idols of the world not cast into the holes 
and caves of the earth, to the moles and to the bats, the 
kingdom of God cannot be said to prevail among men. 
The present policy of nations has indeed, in some measure, 
directed itself to bring about a peaceful order of things, 
and is endeavoring, with consummate skill, to unravel the 
knots which have been formed by manifold entanglements 
in all directions ; but success to its plans is another thing, 
which lies quite beyond its command ; and lasting peace on 
earth is not to be expected by mere human policy, but only 
by the power and grace of God. 

The political condition of Europe is at present upon an 
artificial stretch, whose breaking might happen in an in- 
stant, if we consider the mistrustful mutual vigilance and 
sensitiveness of the respective governments ; and this is 
only prevented by the divine power, working through the 
instrumentality of men. It has appeared to depend mainly 
on the diplomatic prudence and management of the several 
governments, and not without strenuous exertion on their 
part for that purpose. England and Russia are as the 
two opposite poles, in this system of policy. To the 
former, adhere France, Holland, and Belgium, and repre- 
sent with it the liberal constitution ; to the latter, adhere 
Prussia and Austria, the supports of the monarchical prin- 
ciple. The guaranty of popular freedom consists, with 
the former, in the balance maintained between each govern- 
ment and the popular will as expressed by parliaments ; 
with the latter, it rests solely on the personal character of 
the respective monarchs, and in the firmness with which 
they maintain their principles. The knot of their political 
difficulties is found in the entangled affairs of the Eastj 



872 CONCLUSIOK. 

and in this respect it is sought to preserve the balance of 
power against Russia, by supporting the Turkish empire, 
which of late has become much endangered, and of whose 
approaching extinction, warning appears to be given in the 
words of prophecy ; while there is jealousy at Russia's 
increasing maritime strength, at its influence in Turkey 
and Persia, and at its attempts to obtain a share in the 
commerce of India. The exertions of the pasha of Egypt 
to extend his dominion, and to render himself independent, 
form an important part in this entanglement. 

The condition of the United States of North America is still 
more and more developing itself, as its population and culture 
are continuing rapidly to increase ; proving an asylum for 
the oppressed of Europe, and offering a home to wanderers 
from every land. Upon this great and growing nation the 
hopes of the world, as connected with tlie cause of civil 
and religious liberty, to a great extent depend. The re- 
publics in Central and South America remain in a state 
of ferment ; and as they want the solidity of a reli- 
gious basis, little good is at present to be expected from 
them. 

Of Asia, the inhospitable north is under Russian do- 
minion, and its nomadic population is hardly above the 
lowest degree of civilization. "Western Asia is suffering 
under disquietudes, which the approaching fall of Moham- 
medanism brings with it. And the vast empire of China, 
which comprises nearly a third of the population of the 
globe, has, till the year 1843, kept itself in its political and 
religious exclusiveness, and for many centuries has stood 
at one and the same degree of culture. What the present 
openings may have to do in the development of human 
history can be known only by posterity. 

Africa is bordered on all sides with European colonies ; 
but the interior, with its dense population, is, for the most 
part, an unknown region ; and it is only by the horrible 
annual exports of slaves that it has contributed its 



CONCLUSION. 373 

contingent to the history of human cultivation and de- 
velopment. It is reserved for coming years to raise its 
multitude of nations into historical importance ; but that 
this is to be done by the influence of Christianity, rather 
than by any human policy, is what we are taught to expect 
by the word of God. The same may be said of all the 
greater and lesser tribes of Austral Asia and Polynesia. 
The isles of the Pacific, indeed, already present a more 
general reception of Christianity than any other of the 
lands of the heathen. 

Meanwhile, we see the individual states of Europe 
zealously endeavoring to attain to the highest degree of 
outward prosperity, by pushing in every direction the occu-> 
pations and improvements of their national powers. Steam 
navigation, canals, railways, manufactures, mercantile 
companies, and many other enterprises of the kind, are 
accomplished with surprising celerity. If such things 
have, on the one hand, the salutary effect of drawing off 
men's thoughts from revolution, they are, however, partly 
to be regarded, on the other, as a novel way of error, by 
which the nations are led to lose sight of the only satis- 
fying source of real welfare, and become confirmed in the 
notion that human evil is to be remedied from beneath, 
rather than from above. Besides this, there is but too 
much reason for apprehending, that the very means which 
are now affording such facilities to commerce may prove 
fearfully instrumental in the spread of evil, and in the 
quicker execution of plans of extensive mischief; but still 
they present increased facilities for good, and evidently 
form a leading feature in the rapidly accelerating develop- 
ment of the vast plans of divine Providence. 

While, however, we contemplate the Christian world in 
general, as more and more led away after merely human 
expedients, and trusting in " the things that are seen" for 
their recovery of true happiness, we still can say, that the 
power of divine truth is showing itself as anything but a 



374 ' CONCLUSION. . f'?^^ 

spirit of slumber; and inconsiderable ^[S'-tfiig flock of 
Christ's real disciples may yet appear, in comparison with 
the population of the earth, it is evident that God has of 
late, from one period of ten years to another, given them 
no insignificant triumphs, and multiplied his blessing on 
their labors. Through Missionary Societies, Religious 
Tract Societies, and Bible Societies, which have arisen 
both before the beginning of the present century and 
subsequently, in England, Germany, North America, 
and France, incalculable benefits have, under the divine 
blessing, been spread abroad, both in Europe and in 
heathen lands ; and the faith of the evangelical church 
of God, much as it has been assailed by anti-evangelical 
persons, or rather by covert infidels bearing the Chris- 
tian name, who have labored both in preaching and 
writing to wrest or explain away the marvelous truths 
of divine revelation, has, nevertheless, weathered every 
storm, and gained a general respect at the present period. 
Moreover, the humanly invented systems of unsound 
philosophy are found melting away one after another, 
before the light of gospel truth. Many have begun to 
see their folly, and are renewing their homage to Christ, 
as at the foot of the cross ; the doctrines of which 
are daily gaining increased acceptance, and evincing by 
their power, that Messiah rules in the midst of his 



THE END. 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process 
1 Oxide 

200? 



Neutralizing agent iMaonesium Oxide 
Treatment Date MAr 



PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER (N PAPER PRESERVATION 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 160S6 
(724) 779-2111 



